


In Sickness And In Health

by sinderella0069



Series: Living Arrangements [4]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Corruption, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-03-18 16:32:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13685481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinderella0069/pseuds/sinderella0069
Summary: Sequel to Living Arrangements, I Think We're Alone Now and Three's A Crowd. Peridot had a theory the computer in the Kindergarten might contain information about corruption. And she was correct. This is an older!Steven x Peridot story, you have been warned.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to Living Arrangements, I Think We're Alone Now and Three's A Crowd. I really recommend you read them first, because at this point, you probably will find things confusing.
> 
> This is an older!Steven x Peridot story. If older!Steven x Peridot stories are not your thing, I suggest you turn back now, because I will not be all that happy if every single comment I get is a complaint that it's an older!Steven x Peridot story. You have been warned.

"You and Steven are dating."

Peridot sighed as Lapis Lazuli repeated a variation of that statement for a third time. "Yes."

"Dating," Lapis said once more. "You and Steven."

"That's the fourth time you've said that," Peridot pointed out. "Surely it must have sunk in by now."

Lapis shook her head. "Sorry. It's just a bit of a surprise. I mean… he's human-"

"Half human," Peridot corrected.

"-Isn't he all organic and squishy?" Lapis mused aloud, ignoring the other gem's comment. "I mean, he's a sweetheart, but… ew."

" _Half_ human," Peridot said again, a little crossly. "And he's not 'ew.'"

"Sorry, sorry." Lapis laughed at her. "So you're the Paulette to his Percy! Wow!"

"Hey!" Peridot sat upright, outraged. "You take that back!"

"Sorry." Lapis didn't sound remotely sorry. "OK, well, you're weird, but I guess I'm happy for you both. Oh, but Peridot?" She suddenly leaned in closer to the screen, giving Peridot a clear view up her nose. "If you hurt him, I'll kill you."

Peridot rolled her eyes. "Pearl's got you covered there," she mumbled.

"What was that?"

"Nothing," Peridot lied. "Of course I won't hurt him, why would I do that?"

"I don't know," Lapis admitted. "That's just what they say on TV."

"Oh." Peridot thought for a moment and begrudgingly realized the other gem was right. "Very well. Will you be threatening Steven too?"

"No," Lapis said cheerfully. "I like him better than you. Well, good luck with the new drill, I'm going to visit Hole Bottom."

Peridot laughed and wished Lapis well before ending the call and turning back to her computer. Events over the past few days had prevented her from working on her fanfic, so she wiggled her fingers and began typing until finally, the handcuffs holding Percy and Pierre together had been unlocked and the chapter had been uploaded.

Then she turned her attention to the decrypted file she'd been ignoring for the past few hours. She wasn't entirely sure what it was; it wasn't a written report like the first file she'd recovered, and so she tried opening it in a few other programs, with little success. She was just breaking it down into binary to see if that gave her a clue when all of a sudden, her vision went dark and a voice behind her sang, "guess who!"

Peridot considered that question for a moment. "I'm hoping it's Steven, any other option would be mildly disturbing."

Steven laughed and uncovered her eyes again. "Yeah, it's me." Then he leaned forward and kissed the back of her neck. "Still trying to figure out that file?"

"Yes." Peridot smiled. "But you're being very distracting."

"Sorry," he lied cheerfully. "You just look so cute when you're concentrating. Do you want some company?" he quickly added before she could take offense at being called 'cute'. "I could grab my notebook and work on some music while you work."

"That would be nice," she conceded. "Oh, by the way," she called after him as he moved towards the door, "there's a box of donuts for us on the kitchen counter. Pearl made them."

"Oh!" He blinked in surprise. "You… you spoke to her?" he asked cautiously. Things between Pearl and Peridot had not been good recently. Actually, 'not good' was a bit of an understatement; upon discovering that Steven and Peridot were a couple, Pearl had lashed out at the younger gem, both physically and verbally, forcing them to stay with his father until things calmed down. And although Peridot had agreed to move back into the beach house, he knew she still hadn't really forgiven Pearl.

But now Peridot was nodding. "We talked a little and she apologized again. It seemed to be much more genuine this time. We're not exactly… friends again," she said haltingly, "but she's trying, and I'm tired of being angry all the time, so I think I'm going to give her a chance."

"That's great!" He temporarily abandoned the donuts and lunged forward to hug her instead. "I'm really proud of you."

"Aheh." Peridot smirked slightly, and almost considered forgiving the other gem entirely as it seemed to make him so happy. Especially when he turned his face and dropped a few kisses along her jaw. "That's me. Always prepared to be the bigger person," she boasted.

"Really?" Steven laughed and pulled away, and looked pointedly down at her.

"Do not spoil the moment-"

"Bigger person, huh?" he said over her warning. "Did you wear the paint cans?" She gave him a playful swat and he laughed again. "Sorry. Couldn't resist."

"Go! Go and get donuts and cease tormenting me!" she said dramatically. "Oh, and Lapis called," she added in her usual tone. "I told her about us. Is that OK?" she asked a little anxiously. "I concluded that as everybody else knows now, I ought to tell her too, but it occurred to me afterwards that I should have discussed it with you first-"

"It's fine, don't worry," Steven quickly interjected. Then he paused. "How... how did she take it?"

"She was fine," Peridot said, much to his relief. "Revolted, but supportive."

"That's good. I mean," he corrected, "'revolted' isn't _the_ most encouraging thing to hear, but so long as she's not mad, that's good."

"She's not mad," Peridot clarified at once. "Although she did threaten to kill me if I hurt you."

"I won't tell her you just took a swipe at me then," he joked, and jumped back before she could try again. "Be right back."

He walked back into the main part of the house and over to his room, humming happily to himself. Things were looking up. They were back home. Pearl was trying to make things up to them (and he was pleased to see that her donuts looked considerably more edible than Amethyst's). Nobody thought he was dating Connie any more, which also meant she might be more willing to come over now she knew nobody was going to be dropping any more hints about permafusion Stevonnie-

His phone suddenly jingled and he tucked his notebook under his elbow and adjusted his grip on the donut box so that he could pull it out of his pocket. "Speak of the devil," he said to himself, spotting Connie's name on the screen. He opened the message and quickly skimmed the contents as he made his way back to Peridot's room.

"Hey Peri, Connie wants to know how things are going," he announced, dropping the box and the notebook on the sofa and making his way back over to her. "And she wants to know if we wanna go have brunch with her in half an hour or so."

"Sure, that would be nice." Peridot leaned back in her chair and rubbed the back on her neck. "I could use the break," she grumbled under her breath.

"Still no luck with the file?" Steven asked sympathetically.

"No," Peridot admitted. She pulled a face at the screen. "I think I'll leave it for a little while and continue with the plans for the drill security system instead."

"Good idea." He grinned suddenly and leaned over the back of her chair and wrapped his arms around her. "You know, when this whole thing with the Cluster is over, we should celebrate," he suggested. "You and me. Alone. We'll go on vacation," he elaborated, already planning half-a-dozen different destinations in his head. "We could go to Venice for realsies. Maybe..." He leaned forward a little more. "Maybe even pick up where we left off yesterday," he whispered suggestively.

"Oooooh." Peridot wriggled happily at that pleasant thought. "In that case, I shall begin working at once."

Steven pouted; he'd half-hoped they might have time for a quick make-out session before the gems inevitably came knocking on the door to break things up. The one and only downside of being back home was that now the gems knew about their relationship, they certainly weren't going to let the two of them lock themselves in Peridot's room any more. Their moments alone would be moments like this, when the gems were all still in the Temple.

Still, Peridot was right, the sooner the drill was completed and the Cluster was moved to safety, the sooner he could whisk her away on a romantic cruise, so with that in mind, he settled down on her bed and began flicking through his notebook to reread his old song lyrics before he picked up a pen and started writing.

They worked together in comfortable silence for several minutes until Steven got stuck trying to find a suitable rhyme for 'bacon'. He sighed and leaned back against the wall, staring aimlessly into space until his eyes drifted over to the computer screen. Then he narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out why the loops pictured looked familiar. "Is that the file?"

"Hmm?" Peridot looked up from her tablet and refocused her attention upon the screen. "Oh. Yes. I got it open in one program, but it's just showing embedded data, not what it actually _is,_ " she tried to explain.

Steven tilted his head slightly, still trying to figure it out. "It looks like a pattern," he said aloud, and then shook his head in embarrassment. "Sorry, I know that's not much help, I was just thinking aloud."

"A pattern... a pattern?" Peridot's eyes widened as the words sparked off a memory. "Oh! That's it!" She spun around and grabbed at him in excitement. "Steven, you're a genius!"

"I am?" he said blankly.

"It's _sound!_ " she exclaimed, and spun back towards the screen. "Like _music!"_

"Oh. Oh! Right. I get it!" He laughed and picked up his notebook again as Peridot began to switch programs. Aching? No, too Lion King. What else rhymed? Baking? Too alliterative-

_You heard something. From the sky, a sound. A song? And then..._

"Peridot, no!"

He lunged forward to stop her, but it was too late. A low, droning hum came from the speakers and Peridot recoiled with a yelp. Without any hesitation, Steven summoned his shield and smashed it into the computer screen. There was a loud _bang_ and the other noise stopped. He was by her side at once. "Are you OK?" he asked urgently.

"Uh..." Peridot winced and rubbed her temples. It had almost felt at first like the sound had physically manifested and punched her in the face, but it had already faded and was now nothing more than a mild ache behind her eyes. "Yeah, I think so. What was-"

She froze and stared at her arm. Steven followed her gaze and felt his stomach drop when he spotted the dark green speckles blossoming across the skin there. "Tha-that's nothing," he said quickly, and raised her arm to his lips and kissed the spots. Then just to be doubly sure his powers were going work, he licked her arm as well. "There," he said with relief as the spots stopped spreading. "All better-"

"Steven..." Peridot swallowed hard and held out her other arm to show him the blemishes popping up there too.

"I can fix that," he said at once, and swiped his tongue across her skin. "It's going to be all right, you're _fine._ "

Peridot groaned and closed her eyes. She didn't feel fine; the ache in her head was getting worse again, her skin felt itchy and prickly, and every movement made her limbs hurt. She could hear that strange, droning hum growing louder in her ears and draining her strength with every passing moment. "I'm scared," she whispered.

"No, no, don't be," Steven insisted, valiantly trying to keep the growing hysteria out of his voice. "You'll be fine, you'll be _fine,_ I pro-" His voice broke. "I promise." He kissed her gem, and then, rather forcibly kissed her mouth.

It wasn't enough. The speckles were creeping up her neck now and there was nothing they could do to stop it. Peridot whimpered, a little noise of pain and fear, and Steven's heart broke. Tears began to spill down his cheeks and he pulled her closer, letting them drip onto her hair. But Peridot wasn't an organic being and his tears had no effect. The pain in her head increased unbearably and mercifully, she passed out.

As she went limp in his arms, Steven's fragile control over his panic crumbled. "Peridot?" He pulled away and looked down at her. "Peridot! Wake up!" He patted her face as he spoke, accidentally hitting her far harder than he'd intended, and flinched when her skin darkened. "Oh no, sweetie, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

He looked wildly around the room for help, but of course, they were still alone, so he swept her up into his arms and kicked the door open, not caring that the impact sent it flying across the house and through the opposite wall. "HELP ME!" he wailed in the direction of the Temple door.

The effect was immediate. The door split open at once and Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl charged into the room, weapons drawn, before they all stumbled to a halt in confusion and concern at the sight of their weeping foster son cradling Peridot's unconscious body. "What happened? Where is it?" Garnet asked sharply, looking around for a corrupted gem or some Homeworld tech that could be punched to make things better.

"Th-the file, it was the song, we didn't know it was the song," Steven sobbed. "Please, you have to do something, you have to fix it!"

"A song? What-" Behind her shades, Garnet's eyes widened in understanding and from the quiet gasp behind her, she knew Pearl had come to the same conclusion. "Oh _no!"_

"What? What song?" Amethyst asked blankly. "I don't understand?"

"It's..." Pearl paused and swallowed down a sudden wave of nausea. "It's the Diamond's song," she said softly. "She's corrupted."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentines Day!
> 
> So, when I started writing Living Arrangements, I had no real plan for the series other than "get them in the same house so it's easier for them to bang." I was thinking some cutesy one-shots, and had the idea for Peridot's copied human form to get sick and have Steven take care of her. But then I started writing Peridot poking around the Kindergarten computer and thought "wait, what if she got corrupted instead!?" And then all of a sudden, I had an actual plot! Whaaaaat!? So now we're on the fourth part of the series, still no bangin', and canon's gone and put them both in the same house anyway, but at least I have a proper plan for this series now, and maybe at some point, I'll even get around to letting them get naked!
> 
> But not in this one. Sorry.


	2. Chapter 2

Garnet took a step towards Steven and then froze when he recoiled and clutched Peridot tighter. "Don't hurt her!"

"We wouldn't-" The fusion wavered for a moment, Ruby's hurt momentarily taking control before Sapphire's cooler presence reminded her that of course he would assume that. It was how they had dealt with corrupted gems for thousands of years, after all. "Not now," she said aloud as she stabilized. She glanced down, belatedly realizing that she still had her gauntlet's in place. A second later, they were gone and she knelt down in front of him, dismissing her shades as she tried to look as non-threatening as possible. "We're not going to hurt her, Steven," she said softly. "Why don't you-"

The opening chords of Rick Astley's most famous hit suddenly blasted through the air, making Steven, Garnet and Pearl jump violently. "Amethyst, what the hell!?" Pearl shouted, rounding on the younger gem.

"Music!" Amethyst yelled back. She tapped her cell phone and reduced the volume slightly. "If the Diamond's brown noise causes this, maybe another song will help cure it!"

Pearl and Garnet exchanged glances. It wasn't a bad idea at all... the problem was, Rose Quartz had had exactly the same idea several millennia ago, and nothing had ever come of it. But it certainly couldn't hurt, and so neither of them made any further objection. "Steven, why don't you lay her down on the sofa so we can take a look at her?" Garnet asked again.

Steven gave them all a wary look, but by that point they'd all followed Garnet's lead and dissipated their weapons and so he relaxed slightly and carefully placed Peridot down on the sofa as instructed, gently pushing the hair out of her face before he stepped back out of the way. "You-you promise won't hurt her?" he asked in a small voice.

"We won't hurt her," Garnet said. _Until we have to,_ she added internally. Because eventually, they would have to. In more than 5000 years, they hadn't managed to cure a single gem of corruption.

"It's OK, she'll be fine," Amethyst added brightly, patting his arm comfortingly. "I mean, we must be doing _something_ right already, just look at her! Jasper went all monster in like, twenty seconds... what? Why are you shaking your head at me?"

Pearl bit her lip; she didn't want to be the one to snuff out this little glimmer of hope, but it was a hope based on ignorance and both Steven and Amethyst needed to hear the reality of corruption. "This... this is actually fairly typical of corruption," she said apologetically, looking to Garnet for help.

Garnet nodded and straightened up. "Rose Quartz's army was the primary target when the Diamonds used their weapon," she began, coming to stand next to Pearl. "And every gem in the immediate area was almost instantly corrupted. If it wasn't for Rose's shield, we would've suffered the same fate."

"They were our closest allies," Pearl said softly. She hugged herself and turned away slightly as the old traumatic memories came flooding back. "We didn't want to fight them but we quickly realized we had no choice."

Garnet picked up the story again. "It took us days to fight our way clear. But once we had traveled some distance from the initial blast radius, we began to find gems. They had no form, and we weren't really sure what had happened to them, and so we bubbled them up and sent them to our base for safe-keeping while we continued to search for survivors." She paused in recollection. "Then, once we had traveled almost halfway around the Earth, we began to find them. They were unconscious and scarred, but they still held their forms. We took them back and tried to help them."

She trailed off and glanced at Pearl. Neither one of them really wanted to talk about what had happened next, but the similarities were just too close to ignore. "We all tried our best," Pearl said after a moment of silence. "Rose especially. She spent every moment of the next few years tending to those gems, bathing them in her healing tears, placing them inside her bubbles, singing to them..." She looked pointedly at Amethyst's phone, which was now playing Take On Me. "Nothing worked. Just a few weeks after we found the first gems, the corruption was complete. Five years later, the last one turned. And when we popped the bubbles containing the formless gems we'd found, they all reformed corrupted too."

She paused for emphasis. "No matter what we tried, in the end, every single gem who was exposed to the song succumbed to the corruption."

Suddenly Garnet's eyes widened behind her shades and she spun around and grabbed Steven by the shoulders. "Steven, how do you feel?" she asked urgently.

"What?" Steven stared back at her in bewilderment. "Me? How do I _feel?-_ "

"You were exposed as well, am I right?" she quickly clarified. "We never heard any reports of humans being affected by the song, but you _are_ half gem."

"Oh." He laughed bitterly. "No, other than complete, crushing despair, I feel fine. Just _fantastic._ " He shook himself free and went back to stroking Peridot's hair and Garnet belatedly realized he hadn't been paying attention to a single word they'd said.

Amethyst had though, and she pounced upon a small detail that seemed to have been overlooked. "Those gems you found, the ones like Peridot, you said you found them on the other side of the world. But Peridot was like, three feet away from the song."

"She's still corrupted-" Pearl began..

"-But it's not the same!" Amethyst waved her hands wildly for emphasis. " _Everything_ about this is different! She's not even an Era 1 gem, that's gotta change things, surely. And she wasn't infected the same way either – it might not've even been the same song and-" She stopped and snapped her fingers as inspiration hit. "You know, I saw this TV show once about this Navy boat that saw a UFO, and the next day like, pretty much everyone on board was dead-"

Garnet frowned. "Is this relevant?"

"Yes, I'm not completely stupid," Amethyst snapped back irritably. "Anyway, when the, yknow, government people investigated, they found a recording of the whole thing and watched it and it turned out the UFO played a signal to try and convert people into aliens. The dead people were ones where it had gone wrong, but some of the crew _did_ get converted and had escaped already. And the people who watched the tape were affected, but not completely, because they hadn't seen the real thing, so they just had all these weird dreams and hallucinations and shit."

"Hmm." Garnet mulled over that for a moment. "Maybe humans were affected more by the Diamonds song that we realized-"

"Yeah, maybe, whatever, that's not the point." Amethyst waved away the comment dismissively. "The thing is, Peridot didn't get blasted with the song straight from the Diamonds, or even catch it from someone else who was corrupted that way, like Jasper did. She only heard a little bit of a _recording_ of the song, through a cheap computer speaker. I mean," she added, "You've been to concerts before, you know that's a totally different experience to just hearing a song on the radio, right? This is kind of the same thing. We have no idea how _much_ of a difference that makes, but we already know that it _does make a difference,_ because she's not a monster already!" she finished triumphantly.

Garnet opened her mouth, and then closed it again. "That's a fair point," she admitted.

Pearl glanced over at the other gem. "Should... should we try taking her to Rose's fountain then?" she asked timidly. "It never worked before, but if Amethyst is right..."

Garnet shrugged. "It can't hurt to try." She knelt down and gently shook Steven by the shoulder. "Steven?"

"I heard," he said dully.

"Do you want me to take her?" she offered.

"No." He sniffled and wiped his eyes. "No, I'll do it."

"Then let's go."

xxx

Ever since the incident where Amethyst had been cracked, the Crystal Gems had made sure never to let Rose's fountain fall into such a state of disrepair and so only a few short minutes later, Steven was able to lower Peridot's body into the water, making sure to keep her head above the surface so she wouldn't drown. All of the Crystal Gems leaned forward hopefully, but nothing seemed to happen.

"What do we do now?" Pearl whispered to Garnet.

"I... I don't know," Garnet admitted quietly. She looked over at Steven, who was methodically scooping up water and dribbling it into Peridot's mouth, apparently in the hope that ingesting it would give a different result. She didn't really want to tell him to stop, but she was pretty sure he wasn't going to move until they made him.

"Let's try some more music," Amethyst said, and started tapping on her phone again. "There," she announced proudly as Bohemian Rhapsody started to play. "If she doesn't respond to _this_ , she's dead."

Pearl winced. "Possibly not the best choice of words, Amethyst."

"Peridot has a Spotify account," Garnet said suddenly. "Music she likes-"

"Everybody likes Bohemian Rhapsody," Amethyst objected.

"Music that's important to her," Garnet continued as if she hadn't heard her. "We should try playing some of that to her."

"OK, but I don't know her login deets."

"She'll be logged in on her tablet," Garnet pointed out. "Which is back at the house. Steven," she called out in a louder voice. "We need to go back now."

"Just a few more minutes," he called back, making no effort to move.

She frowned and took a few steps over to his side, placing a stern hand on his arm. "Now, Steven. We have another idea," she added when he turned to protest.

"But-" He looked from Garnet down to Peridot's unresponsive face and sighed in defeat and hauled her out of the water. "OK. Let's go back."

Other than the music still playing on Amethyst's phone, the journey back to the warp pad was made in silence, each person lost in their own gloomy thoughts, and every single on of them was taken by surprise when they warped back into the beach house to find Connie pacing the floor, clutching a carving knife.

"What's going on?" she demanded before anybody could react. Her gaze flickered to Peridot laying limp in Steven's arms, and she gripped the knife harder. "What did you do to her!?"

"Nothing!" Amethyst protested as Pearl winced beside her. But she had to admit, it was a somewhat valid accusation. "Honest, we didn't do anything. Right, G?"

"She's been exposed to the Diamond's corrupting song," Garnet explained shortly.

"What!?" Connie's mouth dropped open. "How!?"

"It was the file." Steven's eyes welled up with tears again. "I wasn't fast enough, I c-couldn't stop her-"

Connie still didn't quite understand what was going on, but she immediately knew questioning her friend wasn't going to help at that moment. "Come and put her down here," she said softly, waving the knife in the direction of the sofa.

"Ah... may I?" Pearl stepped forward and held out her hand.

"Huh? Oh, right, sorry." Connie flushed and handed the knife over. "Steven and Peridot were supposed to meet meet me for brunch," she explained. "When they never showed, I thought there might be trouble, and I don't have Rose's sword."

"And you seriously thought we'd done something to them?" Amethyst clutched her chest theatrically "That stings, dude."

"You sicced Jasper on us," Connie dryly reminded her. "But no, I didn't really think you'd done anything. I thought maybe it was Homeworld or a corrupted gem..." She trailed off and bit her lip as she realized how right she was.

"Peridot's computer decoded one of the files from the kindergarten computer," Pearl explained quietly. "She had a theory that some of the data there might be information about corruption."

"Looks like she was right," Garnet added bitterly. "It seems one of the files was an audio file containing the corruption song-"

Amethyst snapped her fingers. "That reminds me, be right back." She zipped into Peridot's room and reappeared a moment later with her tablet. "OK, Spotify, Spotify... ah ha!" A pained look crossed her face. "Oh no."

"What?" Garnet asked in alarm.

"There's like, 50 Ed Sheeran songs on this playlist." Amethyst shook her head. "Steven, are you _really_ sure you want her back?"

" _Amethyst_!" Pearl exclaimed in horror, but to her surprise, Steven let out a small snort of laughter.

"Some of her music taste is a bit... questionable," he said fondly. "We've had discussions about it." Behind him, Amethyst gave Pearl a smug smirk and hit 'play' before placing the tablet down beside Peridot's head.

Meanwhile, Connie watched as Steven knelt down next to Peridot and stared intently at her face. "This corruption file," she said slowly, turning to face Garnet. "It's still on Peridot's computer? All decrypted and ready to go?"

"Yes," Garnet said simply.

"And the sound doesn't affect humans?"

Garnet hesitated, remembering Amethyst's TV show. "Not as far as we know," she hedged. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, why don't we get Steven's dad to have a look at it?" Connie suggested. "Music is his thing, isn't it? Maybe he can compose... I don't know, a song that's the opposite?"

"Oh, of course!" Pearl exclaimed.

"Yeah!" Amethyst cheered. "That's a great-"

"I broke the computer," Steven interrupted. He closed his eyes and inhaled shakily. "I... I hit it with my shield," he admitted. "To make the noise stop."

The Crystal Gems visibly deflated, but Connie was undeterred. "When you say you hit it, do you mean you hit the computer or just the screen?"

He stared quizzically back at her. "There's a difference?"

Instead of replying, Connie turned and marched across the house and into Peridot's room. The impact from the shield had actually pushed the shattered monitor and speakers into the wall itself, but sure enough, when she bent over and peered under the desk, the computer tower appeared to be perfectly fine. Then she stood up and examined the wall-mounted TV.

"You only broke the screen," she said, stepping back out again. "So I can plug the computer into the TV and use that instead."

"Do-do you need any help?" Pearl offered tentatively.

"No, that's OK." Connie bit her lip in thought. "Actually... maybe you guys should take cover or something? I mean, I'll make sure everything's muted first, but... just in case-"

Before the words had even finished leaving her mouth, a large, pink bubble at least an inch think sprang up around the gems. Connie blinked and stepped forward, squinting a little as she tried to focus upon the blurry forms inside. "Yeah, that should do the trick," she said dryly. "I doubt the Diamonds themselves could get past _that."_

"Good," Steven flatly.

Connie lingered by the bubble for a moment longer, but there wasn't really anything she could say to that, so she dove back into Peridot's room and set to work, reappearing a few minutes later with a flash drive in her hands. "Got it!" she declared triumphantly.

Steven didn't appear to hear her, but the bubble shield popped and the Crystal Gems almost fell over. "Is it done? Do you have it?" Amethyst asked at once.

"Right here." Connie held up the flash drive. "I'll take it over to the car wash now."

"I'll come with you," Garnet said at once.

"Wait, is it safe now? Peridot's computer," Pearl quickly clarified. "I'd like to check and make sure the decryption program's still running and look at some of the other files from the Kindergarten." She shrugged helplessly. "I just... there still might be _something_ that can help."

"It's safe," Connie confirmed. "The file isn't running and I turned off all the sound."

Pearl nodded and vanished into the other room. Connie and Garnet left a moment later, and Amethyst suddenly found herself alone with Steven and Peridot. "Um..." She looked around for a distraction. "I'm gonna... go see if Pearl needs some help," she muttered.

"OK," Steven said listlessly.

Amethyst hesitated, then lunged forward and gave him a hard hug. "We'll get her back, buddy," she said fiercely. "I promise."


	3. Chapter 3

Greg turned the flash drive over in his hands, marveling at how completely harmless it looked. It was a little difficult to believe that he was holding the Diamonds final weapon of war and not a collection of funny cat videos. "I feel like I'm holding the nuclear launch codes," he admitted. "Are you really sure you wanna give this to _me?"_

"We can't exactly listen to it ourselves," Garnet pointed out.

"Oh no, yeah, I get that," Greg said quickly. "I just meant like, maybe you should give this to scientists at NASA. The big brains, you know. I'm just a guy."

"You a guy who knows music," Connie reminded him.

"You were able to decode the message Lapis sent through the Wailing Stone," Garnet added.

"Yeah, but that was just a kind of space-Facetime," he protested. "This is a space _weapon!"_

"Please, Mr Universe!" Connie begged. "Steven and Peridot need your help!"

"We can't trust the government with this file." Garnet adjusted her shades and frowned. "They're not going to have the same priorities that we do. They'll be looking at how to make it a stronger weapon, not at how to undo the damage it's done. It won't matter to them that tampering with it could cause harm to the Crystal Gems – and to Steven," she added meaningfully. "He is, after all, half-gem..."

"All right, I get your point." Greg sighed and took another look at the flash drive before putting it in his pocket. "I'll take a look at it."

"Thank you," Garnet said with relief.

It was clearly a time-sensitive task he'd been set, so he began shutting down the car wash. "So what are you guys doing in the meantime?" he asked as he began winding up a hosepipe. "I mean... she's not bubbled, is she? Is that safe?"

Garnet shrugged. "Difficult to say. She could stay as she is for months before becoming fully corrupted. Maybe longer. We're not going to try and poof her until that happens though, so that gives us time to try..." She paused. "I dunno, something."

"They already tried taking her to Rose's fountain." Connie flicked over the sign on the office door. "And now Amethyst's got her tablet playing music."

"That's not a bad idea." Greg quickly switched off the power to the sign and locked the doors. "Music has been proven to affect mood, after all, and you said corruption's a mind-thing." He hummed thoughtfully. "Maybe I should come over and take a look at her playlist. I mean," he continued, "a song like 'Stan' probably isn't the best background music for a restful, healing environment, is it?"

xxx

Amethyst stepped through the slightly splintered door frame into Peridot's room and watched Pearl as she worked on the computer. "Find anything interesting?"

"Yes." Pearl kept her eyes glued upon the TV screen. "At least three thousand ebooks that I'm quite sure she hasn't paid for." She clicked the mouse and frowned. "And a lot of movies. This level of piracy is very concerning, I'm going to have to talk to her about it."

"So you think we can cure her then?" Amethyst said eagerly.

Pearl's shoulders slumped. "Honestly... I'm not too hopeful," she admitted in a hushed tone. "I know the method of transmission is different in this case, but she _is_ still corrupted, and in over five thousand years, the only gem we've come _close_ to curing is Centipeedle. And, well, you saw how that turned out."

"Ugh." Amethyst sighed heavily, and then gave her a sidelong glance. "Bet you wish you'd just kept quiet, huh?"

Pearl stared at her, trying to figure out if Amethyst meant what she thought she meant. "Excuse me?"

"Y'now, about those two," Amethyst continued, oblivious to the darkening look on the other gem's face. "And you not approving. After all that, all you needed to do was keep quiet and wait for Peridot to muck it all up by getting herself corrupted-" She finally caught sight of Pearl's face and trailed off. "Uh, I mean-"

"Do you honestly think-" Pearl said heatedly before catching sight of the door frame and its missing door. With considerable restraint, she stopped and lowered her voice. "You think I'm even _remotely_ happy about any of this?" she hissed furiously.

"No, no-" Amethyst stammered.

"Several thousand years ago, I watched almost every single one of my friends and allies slowly turn into giant, murderous beasts that I was forced to battle," Pearl continued relentlessly. "And since then, we have cured _no-one."_

"Uh-"

"Hundreds of good gems, gems I trusted with my life, now little better than animals. It took me many years to accept that that my friends were gone for good. Do you really believe I _ever_ wanted Steven to know how that feels?" Pearl ranted.

Amethyst swallowed hard and shook her head. "No, you're right P, that was cruel of me. I'm sorry. It was just supposed to be a dumb joke, lighten the mood, that's all."

"Why would you joke about something like that?" Pearl asked irritably. "This is serious, Amethyst!"

Amethyst opened her mouth and then closed it again. She had absolute faith that Steven would find some way to cure Peridot, but it was finally beginning to dawn on her that Pearl didn't share her confidence. "Steven'll fix her," she said quietly. "I know he will."

Pearl sighed and turned her attention back to the computer. "I wish I could believe that," she said softly. "I _want_ to believe that." She briefly closed her eyes, fighting down the terrible fear that Amethyst's comment had sparked.

What if _Steven_ thought she was happy about this?

So even though she didn't really believe it would help, even though her hopes had been raised and dashed too many times now for her to dare to hope again, she would look through every file on the computer for a clue. She would write her own decryption program to run alongside Peridot's. And soon, she would go back to the Kindergarten to look at the computer there too, just in case there was something they'd overlooked. She would not rest until she'd found _something_ useful, even if it took another five thousand years.

Amethyst watched her work for a moment, feeling increasingly awkward and out of place. "Uh..." She waved vaguely towards the doorway. "I'm gonna just... see if I can help Steven with anything," she muttered, and quickly left.

"Uh huh," Pearl said absently to the empty room.

Back in the main room, Amethyst took one look at Steven and immediately remembered why she'd left in the first place. She looked around desperately for some distraction until her gaze settled upon the kettle. "Ah! Tea!" she announced to nobody in particular. It was supposed to be good for shock, and more importantly, it was something to do.

The kettle was just coming to the boil when Garnet returned with Connie and Greg in tow. "Any change?" Garnet asked brusquely.

"Uh..." Amethyst glanced at Steven, but there was no response from his end. "I don't think so. I'm making tea," she added, almost hopefully. "You want some?"

"I'm good. But Greg does."

Greg blinked in surprise. "Uh, yeah, I guess that would be nice," he admitted. Then as Amethyst began hunting for another cup, he sat down next to his son and patted his arm. "Hey. How are holding up, sport?"

Steven glanced up at him and forced his lips into a wobbly smile. "I've been better." The smile crumbled almost immediately and tears began to roll down his cheeks.

"Come here," Greg said kindly and pulled him into a hug.

"Here, tea," Amethyst announced, and thrust a cup at them. "I heard sweet tea's supposed to be good for shock so I put ten spoons of sugar in it."

"...Right." Greg took the cup and turned to his son. "Here-"

"Oh no, that one's for you," Amethyst interrupted. "Steven's has fifteen sugars."

"Right," Greg said again, and watched her head back to the kitchen. "Uh, maybe you should have this one, kiddo."

"Thanks." Steven took the cup and raised it to his lips, grimacing a little at the sickly sweet taste. But weirdly enough, he did feel a tiny bit better, and he sank back into the cushions with a sigh. "Did Connie give you the file?"

"Yeah." Greg glanced up at the girl, who gave him a timid smile in return. "I'm gonna take a look at it in the studio, see if there's anything there I can work with. I just wanted to see how you're doing first. And I thought I'd have a quick look at her playlist too," he added cheerfully, and picked up the tablet. "Y'know, keep some of the more fun, poppy songs playing- wow, that's a lot of Ed Sheeran." He scrolled down the list and his eyes widened. "How many versions of 'Perfect' are _on_ here?" he muttered to himself, and began tapping furiously at the screen.

"Thanks." Steven glanced up at Connie. "You too."

"What are friends for?" Connie sighed. "I just wish there was something more I could do." She stared down at Peridot for a moment. "Is this normal for corruption? I thought... I dunno, I just always assumed it would be fast, like with Jasper. But other than the spots, she just looks like she's sleeping."

Steven blinked and turned to look at his girlfriend again. "She does, doesn't she?" he said slowly.

"Yeah, we asked about that too," Amethyst said, reappearing with another cup of tea. "But apparently this sort of thing happened before..."

As she went on to explain the new details of corruption Pearl and Garnet had shared earlier, Steven tuned out the sound of her voice and sipped his syrupy tea, deep in thought. Once he'd finished, he stood up and stretched. "I'm going to get some air," he said as casually as he could manage, giving Connie a meaningful look.

"I'll come with you," Connie said at once, and followed him outside and down the stairs.

Once they were on the sand, Steven spun around to face her. "I have an idea."

"Great!" Connie waved up at the house. "We should tell the others!"

"Ah, no." He shook his head. "I don't think they'd approve."

Connie's shoulders slumped and she sighed. "Yeah, I figured that when you brought us out here." But Steven was her best friend and he was hurting, so she took a deep breath and straightened up. "OK. What's the plan, and how can I help?"

"I'm going to have a nap," he began. "And I'm going to try and enter Peridot's mind and see if I can communicate with her."

"What!?" Connie quickly glanced around to make sure her shout hadn't caught anyone's attention before turning back to him. "Steven, that's really dangerous!" she hissed. "We have _no idea_ what that would do to you! I mean, Jasper got corrupted just fusing her form with another corrupted gem and you wanna jump in Peridot's mind!?"

"I'll be fine," he said blithely. "It doesn't affect humans-"

"You're half gem," she argued at once.

"But I was exposed at the same time she was," he pointed out. "And I'm fine. So I think it's kinda like the destabilizers, and my human side stops my gem side from being hurt."

Connie opened her mouth and then shut it again, unable to think of a rebuttal to that. "OK, fine, you have a point there," she conceded grumpily. "Where do I come in?" Her eyes suddenly widened. "You're not literally planning to bring me into her mind too, are you!?"

"No, no," he hastily reassured her. "It's just, going into someone's dreams makes me really tired and I don't want the gems to panic if I'm still asleep tomorrow afternoon, so I need you to tell them what I'm doing. But not until after I've started doing it."

"Ugh. Fine. I'll tell them in the morning. And when we go back inside, I'll suggest you rest to get over the shock." Privately Connie thought plain old rest was a far better idea than attempting to enter Peridot's corrupted mindstate anyway. In fact... "I have some sleeping pills in my purse if you want," she suggested. "My mom gave me some before I went to college," she explained at his incredulous look. "For emergencies, like if I have trouble sleeping before a big test. A good night's sleep is very important, you know that. Anyway, you don't have to take them if you don't want, but they might help." And with any luck, medicated sleep would stop him from being able to use his dream powers, at least until she'd had a chance to tell the gems. She knew none of them could really stop him if he was determined to go through with this, but she would feel better if the people who actually knew and understood this magical stuff knew what he was planning to do.

"Sure," Steven said, much to her relief. "I guess I could use the help. Come on then."

They walked back up to the house, and Steven rubbed his eyes theatrically. Connie hesitated for just a second before slipping into her role. "Maybe you should get some rest, Steven," she said, trying to sound natural. "Take a nap or something."

"That's not a bad idea," Greg spoke up. He stood up and ruffled his son's hair. "You've had a pretty rough morning. Get some rest, and let us deal with this."

"OK Dad." Steven smiled sweetly up at his father. "You're the boss."

Connie frowned momentarily before remembering the other part of the plan. "Wait, I have some pills," she blurted out, and dove for her purse. "Sleeping pills, from mom." She rummaged through the contents, then gave up and tipped a surprisingly large amount of medical paraphernalia out onto the floor. "Midol, Percocet, Vicodin, Ventolin-oops-"

Greg reached down and grabbed the inhaler before it could roll under the sofa and handed it back to her. "You have asthma? I didn't know."

"Nah, I'm fine." Connie smiled and put the inhaler back in the bag. "Mom just thought I should keep one with me in case anyone else needed one. Same with the EpiPen and the adrenaline shot. Ah, here we go, Ambien!" She proudly waved the pill bottle aloft. "Here. Take two of these with some water or something." She tipped the pills into his hand and mouthed 'good luck' silently at him before sweeping the rest of her tiny pharmacy back into her purse. "I gotta go home now, call me and let me know if there's any change, OK?"

"I'd better head off too and get into the studio," Greg added and gave his son another hug. "Call me when you wake up."

"Sure thing, Dad." Steven waved them both goodbye and then popped the pills into his mouth and washed them down with the second syrupy cup of tea, gagging a little at the intensely sweet taste. "See you guys later," he said to Garnet and Amethyst. Then he leaned down and gave Peridot a quick kiss on the forehead before climbing up the stairs to his room. He pulled on his pajamas, already beginning to feel a little sluggish, and climbed into bed.

 _Hang in there, Peridot,_ he thought to himself as he closed his eyes. _I'm on my way._


	4. Chapter 4

"Hey, Steven!"

Steven stopped walking and turned around and waited for Connie to catch up to him. She jogged down the hallway, and then slowed down as she approached. "So, are you ready?" she asked, falling into step beside him.

"Ready?" he repeated in surprise. "Ready for what?"

"For the history exam, of course!" Connie came to a halt in front of a door and pushed it open to reveal a classroom.

"History exam?" A cold chill ran down his spine. "What history exam!?"

"The one about the Crystal Gems rebellion and war against Homeworld, of course," she explained. "You _did_ study for it, right?"

"Of course!" he lied at once, but as he sat down at an empty desk, his mind was blank. He shivered and wrapped his arms around himself, vaguely aware that he was only wearing his underpants, but nobody else seemed to notice and so he decided to concentrate on the slightly more pressing problem of the exam he hadn't studied for because he'd never been to school. "Am I supposed to be here?" he said aloud.

"Shh," Rose scolded, and handed him the question sheet. Steven shut up and watched as she passed the papers around to the rest of the students before returning to the front of the class. "No talking. You have forty-five minutes. Your time starts now."

Steven stared down at the paper for a moment, and then took a deep breath and turned it over. Perhaps he could just wing it. He knew _some_ stuff about the war, didn't he? A few details he'd managed to drag out of Pearl and Garnet over the years? But as he looked down at the questions, that faint hope immediately curled up and died.

All the questions were written in Gem language. He didn't even know where he was supposed to write his _name._

Dread settled over him. He flicked to the next page, but that too was filled with the same unfamiliar squiggles. He turned his head to the side, trying to peek at Connie's paper, but she had her arm curled protectively around it, blocking his view. In desperation, he looked to his other side, but the seat next to him was empty. He frowned and turned to look at the rest of the room. All the other desks were occupied. Somebody was missing.

"Steven Universe, is there a problem?"

Steven snapped his head back to face his mother and blushed. "No, sorry." He picked up a pencil and stared blankly down at the paper, wondering where to even start.

A name. Start with a name.

He pressed the point of the pencil onto a blank spot and began writing, but instead of his own name, he watched another name take form.

Peridot.

He stopped and reread what he'd written. It sparked something in the back of his mind and he turned and looked around the room again. The faces were familiar, but one important one was missing. "Where's Peridot?"

The sound of scratching pencils stopped as everyone stared at him in silence. Rose sighed and shook her head sadly. "Peridot doesn't take this class anymore, Steven."

Steven blinked and looked down at the name on his paper again. "I have to find her," he said abruptly, and jumped to his feet.

"Steven, please, you're disrupting the class," Rose said in a pained tone as gasps and giggles erupted from the other students as they finally spotted his state of undress.

For a moment, he was tempted to sit back down and hide behind the cover of his desk, but the moment quickly passed. "I have to go, sorry."

"If you leave, you will fail this class," Rose warned.

"That's all right." He gave her a small, apologetic smile. "I'm not supposed to be here anyway." And with that, he strode open to the door and stepped outside into the hallway. The door swung shut behind him and suddenly, there was complete silence.

Steven looked up and down the hallway, noting how each direction looked completely identical, stretching endlessly into the distance. "Well, I came from that direction," he said to himself as he looked to the left. "So I guess I'll go this way." And then he turned right and began walking.

Time passed; how long, he had no idea. At some point his clothes returned, but he couldn't say when it had happened. It felt like weeks and at the same time, it was no more than a few seconds, but after an eternity of walking down the bland, empty hall, the lights ahead dimmed and then he was in darkness. He slowed down, wary of tripping over something. "Peridot?"

There was no reply, but somewhere up ahead, the darkness seemed somewhat less and so he began cautiously heading in that direction. Sure enough, after he'd walked some distance, the path ahead began to grow lighter and he sped up his pace. "Peridot!"

Without warning, he burst through into the light. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, and he blinked rapidly, trying to clear the spots from his eyes. Then they widened in relief when he spotted the struggling figure a few short meters away. "Peridot!"

It was then that he realized they were in the barn from her nightmares. Multicolored arms stuck up out of the ground, like gross alien flowers, their fingers flexing and groping for purchase. A lone, orange finger caressed the tip of his toes through his sandals, and he took a step back, revolted, and tripped another one behind him. "Oop!"

"Steven!" Peridot yanked her foot free and began trying to drag herself over to him, but with every step, eager, grasping hands clawed at her, hindering her progress. "Ugh, let go of me, you clods!" Peridot aimed a kick at one of the nearest hands and almost toppled over as well.

"I'm OK!" Steven called out. Weirdly enough, it was the truth – the hands brushed against him, but didn't seem interested in investigating him any further. But they were obviously very interested in attacking Peridot and so he summoned a bubble and began rolling towards her. "Hold on, I'm coming!"

The bubble bounced over the gem mutants and then she was in his arms, but there was no time to enjoy it because they both immediately fell over in an untidy heap. Recalling the last time something like this had happened, Steven flung his arms out wildly and immediately, spikes popped out of the shield surface and jammed into the ground, halting their forward momentum at once. Well, halting the bubble's forward momentum; Steven and Peridot both bounced off the inside and slid ungracefully to the bottom, where they lay in stunned silence for several seconds.

Peridot was the first to recover. She sat up and turned to him in concern. "Steven, are you all right!?"

"Yeah, I think so." He winced and sat up, rubbing his elbow and wondering if he'd feel this when he woke up. "Might have a bruise."

"Not that," she said, shaking her head impatiently. "I mean, are you all right, why are you here?"

"What?" he asked blankly, Then it clicked. "Oh! Yes, I'm fine, I suppose. I'm just asleep. I just..." He swallowed hard. "I had to try and find you."

"Steven!" She gave his shoulder a shove. "I know you haven't forgotten what happened to Jasper, corruption is contagious! This- this mental meeting could be another path of transmission! Get out of here!"

Steven shook his head. "Too late, I'm already here. If I'm infected, I'm infected. Which I'm not," he added hastily as her eyes widened in dismay. "It doesn't affect humans. I know, I know, half-human," he continued before she could point that out for him. "But I heard that song at the same time you did and nothing happened to me, so I'm pretty sure my human side makes me immune."

"Well, I just hope your hypothesis is correct," she snapped. Then she sighed and slumped against him. "But I must admit, I'm not entirely unhappy you're here."

"That's good." He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. "Not entirely unhappy is exactly the reaction I was hoping for."

"Don't get me wrong, I still think you're insane," she murmured. "And if you're wrong about your immunity, I will blame myself entirely. But..." She shifted slightly and blushed. "I'm glad you're here with me now."

"Speaking of 'here'," Steven said, peering out of the pink-tinted shield, "what's with the barn?"

"Am I completely corrupted?" Peridot asked abruptly, ignoring his question.

"No, no, no," he quickly reassured her. "It's barely noticeable. Honest," he protested when she snorted. "Connie said you just look like you're sleeping. That's what gave me the idea to try and contact you this way."

"Hmm." Peridot nodded slowly. "I thought as much. Well, hoped. It's something of a relief to hear." She gazed out of the bubble as well, shivering slightly at the sound of hands rubbing across the outer surface. "I suspect this place is a- a sort of psychological battleground, designed to prey upon my fears and insecurities. You already know about the gem mutants, of course."

"So the barn...?" Steven asked again. "I thought you were happy there?"

Peridot shrugged. "I wasn't _un_ happy," she said slowly. "But it was... somewhat isolated. Lapis was my only company for most of the time, and I didn't feel much like part of the team. I assume that's also why my default form has altered," she added with distaste, and for the first time, Steven noticed the diamonds on her knees. "A way of reminding me that no matter how much I try to change, I was ultimately made for Yellow Diamond and I belong to her."

"What!? No you don't!" he argued at once. "She lost any claim to you when she tried to blow you up! No," he immediately corrected himself. "When she abandoned you here after the ship crashed. The Diamonds shouldn't be 'owning' other gems anyway, that's not right."

"Well, they do," Peridot said flatly. "That's how things work on Homeworld."

Steven opened his mouth to argue some more and then fell silent. She was right, that was how things worked on Homeworld. The war hadn't changed that at all. _Bismuth was right,_ he found himself thinking. "You're not the only one who got a change of clothes," he said, mostly just to change the subject. "Before I got here, I dreamed I was taking an exam in my underpants."

Peridot laughed. "That sounds fun, can I visit your dreams instead?"

Steven laughed as well, then he stopped and sat up a little straighter. "Hey, that's actually not a bad idea. I mean, maybe not _that_ dream, but I could try and dream us someplace else?"

Peridot hesitated for a moment, trying to keep her skyrocketing hopes under control. "Well. It's certainly worth a try," she said carefully.

"Do you have some place in mind?" He gave her a gentle squeeze. "Camp Pining Hearts? Museum of Modern Arts?" He hugged her a little tighter. "Venice?"

She sighed and snuggled against him. "Can you take me home?"

"I'll do my best," he promised, and closed his eyes. An image of the beach house began to take shape in his mind. The temple doorway and the warp pad, the kitchen and main room, his own room raised above it, Peridot's new room-

"Steven!"

His eyes snapped open at once. "What's wrong?"

"You were fading," she said in a small, frightened voice. "And I panicked, I'm sorry."

"Hey, it's OK," he reassured her. "I probably did something wrong, I'll just try again."

Peridot bit her lip and then nodded slowly. "OK." She shuffled back a little and watched anxiously as he closed his eyes again, but to her dismay, he started to fade again until she could almost see the bubble and the barn through him. She reached out to grab his shirt and then stopped helplessly, terrified that her fingers would just pass straight through him. She opened her mouth to call him back, but before she could, his outline wavered and suddenly solidified again.

"Whoa, that was weird," he said shakily. "You were- I couldn't _feel_ you any more." He rubbed his eyes and shook his head slightly. "Did I - what was it, fade away again?"

"Yes." She sighed heavily. "I don't think this is going to work." And even though she'd tried not to hope, the failure still hurt and she stood up and turned away so he couldn't see the tears in her eyes.

"I can keep trying-"

"What's the point!?" Peridot snapped, angrily brushing the tears away. "This isn't a dream, it was stupid to think your dream powers would have any effect here."

Hurt, Steven opened his mouth to make a sharp retort, but then she turned her face slightly and he spotted the tear tracks on her face. "I know you're scared," he said quietly, and stood up as well and wrapped his arms around her rigid form. "I am too. But we have to keep trying." He tightened his hold on her a little. "You're not corrupted yet," he said fiercely.

Peridot stood stiffly in his embrace for a moment longer, and then sagged against him. "I apologize for shouting at you. I know you're just trying to help."

"It's OK." He kissed the top of her hair. "This is kind of an extreme situation here. Besides," he added, "my dream powers aren't _completely_ useless. They got me here, after all."

A tiny smile appeared at the corner of Peridot's mouth. "That's true," she admitted.

"But you're right, this isn't a dream." He gazed outside the bubble at the pink-tinted limbs shuffling across the barn floor. A battleground, that's what Peridot had called it. Presumably the battle would be lost if the fusion experiments managed to overwhelm her. But how were they to win?

He turned in a small circle and spotted the barn entrance off to the side. "Come on, this way. Let's see if we can get out of here."

Peridot followed his gaze and nodded. "OK." She stood up a little straighter, suddenly filled with steely determination. "Let's do this."

They began walking. The bubble bumped over the disembodied limbs, spikes occasionally poofing them, and once again, time ceased to have any meaning. It could've been minutes, it could've been hours, but either way, the door stayed stubbornly out of reach. Then, without warning, one of the hands outside grabbed a spike and the bubble jolted to a halt, and they both stumbled and fell.

"Steven-"

Steven jumped back up onto his feet again. "Come on," he interrupted, holding a hand out to her. "We're almost there."

Peridot let him help her upright, and then pulled her hand free. "We've been 'almost there' for hours," she said quietly. "I... I think you should go now."

"No way-"

"Steven, please!" She gazed beseechingly up at him until he looked away. "Using your dream powers fatigues you, you know that. And that's just with regular dreams! I don't want to hurt you!"

"You won't-" he tried again.

"You don't _know_ that!" She paused to gather her thoughts for a moment. "Do the gems know you're doing this?"

"Yes- well, sort of. I told Connie to tell them," he admitted.

"So if you fail to wake up, they'll know it's because you're here. They'll think you're trapped. And I don't know if they'll be able to wait for you to wake up, or if they'll panic and poof me to try and get you back." She sighed and hugged him, burying her face in his chest. "I can't say I would blame them," she said, her voice muffled by his shirt. "But I don't think that would be very good for _me._ "

Steven grimaced. "I guess I hadn't thought of that," he admitted. He wanted to believe that the Crystal Gems would be sensible enough to wait for him, but she was right, they probably would panic and poof her. Restraint had never been one of their strong points. He huffed and wrapped his arms around her again. "I don't want to leave you here alone though."

"I don't want you to either." She turned her face slightly and listened to his heart beating. The rhythm was soothing and for a moment, she allowed herself to be lulled into a false sense of security. Because it was the only way she was going to find the strength to let him go. "But you need to. You need to tell the Gems you're safe. You need to tell them you've been able to contact me. You need to tell them-" She stopped talking and frowned as she finally became aware of the another faint sound. "Is that music?"

"Huh?" Steven raised his head and listened hard. Sure enough, he could just very faintly pick out a low, throbbing beat. "Ah! Yeah, Amethyst thought music might help, so she's put your playlist on."

"Well, you need to tell her to turn it up!" Peridot exclaimed. "How's that supposed to help me when I can't even tell what song it is?"

Steven couldn't help chuckling at that. "All right. I'll go and talk to them. But then I'm coming right back."

"OK." Peridot reluctantly stepped out of his arms and adopted a slightly untidy defensive position. "And I'll keep fighting."

"Kick their asses." He gave her a quick kiss and then closed his eyes, trying to picture the beach house once again.

"Oh, and Steven?"

His eyes snapped open at once. "Yes?"

"If..." She hesitated for a moment. "If I fail and succumb to the corruption, promise me you won't do anything stupid?"

"Like what?" he said warily.

"Like trying to come back here," she replied sternly. "It would be far too dangerous and I don't want you to do that. Just... poof me and bubble me." A tiny, wobbly smile appeared on her face. "And when Yellow Diamond shows up? Let me at her."

Steven laughed again, and then hugged her fiercely before she could see the tears in his eyes. "I love you so much."

"I love you too," she whispered.

And then, before she could make him promise, he closed his eyes and vanished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't usually take breaks in the middle of a story, but I just found out about Stevidot week and I wanna write some stuff for it, so this fic will be on pause until after that, and then I'll be right back.


	5. Chapter 5

"A long, long time ago, I can still remember-"

Amethyst frowned and picked up the tablet. Then she dropped it with a groan. "Ugh, seriously P-dot? This song lasts forevvvvvver! And I'm sure it's already been on twice already."

Peridot, of course, did not respond, but that didn't stop Amethyst from talking to her. They said coma patients could hear when people talked to them, so maybe Peridot could hear her too. "I'm gonna take your playlist off of shuffle," she announced. "Because obviously it's just repeat- oh, it's already off shuffle and you do, in fact, have three copies of this boring, long-ass song on it. Well, seeing as the first two didn't snap you out of it, I'm just gonna skip on to the next one, 'kay?"

She looked hopefully down at the other gem. Absolutely nothing happened.

"OK, I'm not hearing any objections, so imma go ahead and play... ew, Nickleback!? Why are you such trash?" Still, it was Peridot's playlist, so she let the song play. "When this playlist is done, I'm gonna find some better music for you," she promised.

Hours passed. The music became a blur and still there was no change. Amethyst would never admit it out loud, but now she was beginning to get just a little bit worried. Because as Pearl and Garnet had pointed out, they hadn't managed to cure anybody, ever.

Then again, they hadn't exactly been trying lately. The last time anyone had tried doing something about corruption had been when Steven had busted out his healing spit on Centipeedle. Nobody had ever suggested going back to her ship to see if his new healing tears might do the trick. They'd just all got used to the way things were, she thought ruefully. In her case, things had never been any different. She'd never known the gems before they were corrupted – well, other than Jasper, of course, and nobody was in any real hurry to heal _her._

How many of the gems in the Burning Room were friends of Garnet and Pearl though? Amethyst pictured the room in her mind, trying to remember just how many bubbles there were. Hundreds? Thousands? Some of them were probably Homeworld gems like Centipeedle, who hadn't made it off the planet in time, but the vast majority had to be Crystal Gems.

All gone.

The thought made her shiver. All those gems. And only a handful of survivors. Garnet and Pearl, saved by Rose and her shield. Herself, incubating in the Kindergarten. Lapis in the mirror. And Bismuth, bubbled by Rose and hidden. That was it-

No, not quite, she realized. There was one more. The Cluster. Just like her, it had been incubating when the Diamond's song had been unleashed.

Her thoughts began to swirl around her mind. Something was bothering her, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. Bismuth in her bubble. The Cluster, made of millions of gem shards. Bismuth, who had made Rose's sword. The sword that couldn't shatter a gem. As far as Amethyst knew, the only gem Rose had ever shattered was Pink Diamond, right at the end of the war.

Had anyone else on their side shattered gems? Amethyst frowned, trying to figure it out. Rose was the leader of the Crystal Gems, she could've ordered them all not to shatter anyone. But Peridot had said that Homeworld was scrambling to make more soldiers, that the Beta Kindergarten was a rush job.

So what had happened to the soldiers to make Homeworld need more? Had they all switched sides? Or-?

Amethyst suddenly jumped to her feet, tossed the tablet aside and marched over to the Temple door, which obligingly opened up for her. Once she was inside her room, she walked through her piles of garbage, making a beeline for the right puddle. Once she'd found it, she jumped straight in, landing gracefully in the Burning Room at Garnet's feet.

"Hello, Amethyst," Garnet said mildly. "Can I help you?"

"Actually, yeah." Amethyst straightened up and looked seriously up at the other gem. "I was wondering what you guys did with the Homeworld soldiers when you defeated them. I'm guessing Rose probably didn't let them get shattered, 'cause I'm betting if the Diamonds thought you guys were shattering all their gems, they would've used their song long before she got a chance to shatter Pink Diamond. But I'm also guessing you didn't just leave them all lying around the battlefield. Be a dumb idea to just let your enemy keep respawning, right?"

If Garnet was surprised by this line of inquiry, it didn't show. Instead she stared back at Amethyst in silence, and then nodded slowly. "You're right, we tried to avoid shattering them. Of course, sometimes casualties couldn't be avoided, it was war, after all. But for the most past, once we poofed them, we bubbled them and sent them back to our base." She smirked slightly. "It was always easier for Rose to get them to switch sides if they were in one piece."

Amethyst frowned, recalling the slavish devotion she'd seen in some of the gems she'd met in recent years. Peridot was really the only one they'd got to properly switch sides, and even then, it had been rejection from Yellow Diamond herself that had given her the final push. True, Rose probably had slighter better methods, such as not tying prisoners up and punching them in the face, but there were still bound to be a lot of Homeworld prisoners who stayed loyal. "What did you do with the ones who didn't switch?" she asked curiously.

Garnet shrugged. "We used some of them to negotiate the return of our own troops, but unfortunately, many of them didn't return in once piece," she said a little bitterly, and gestured towards a bubble of gem shards. "The rest we kept as prisoners of war."

Amethyst stared at her in rising disbelief. "Wait, let me get this straight," she said slowly. "You're saying there's a bunch of bubbled gems from the war here, who might not even be corrupted!?"

"That's not what I said," Garnet protested at once. "We don't for sure they're not corrupted-"

"Bismuth wasn't corrupted," Amethyst interrupted.

"Bismuth was _hidden_ ," Garnet shot back. "We don't know if she was saved because she was in a bubble, or if it was because she was in Rose's bubble, or even if it was because she was in that pocket dimension in Lion's mane. Just because she was saved, doesn't mean the others were.

"So let's unbubble one and find out!" Amethyst exclaimed.

"No!"

"Why the heck not!?"

"Because there's no _point!"_ Garnet sighed, stepped back and dismissed her shades. "Look, Rose tried talking to all of them before, and they refused to listen. Why would they change sides now? Our forces are massively depleted, our leader is gone... joining us is hardly an attractive prospect," she finished gloomily. "So if they're not corrupted, we'd just have to fight them, and I don't want to risk that. Remember how much trouble Jasper gave us? And Lapis! Even with a cracked gem, she still kicked our butts! Heck, even Peridot managed to give us the runaround! And if they _are_ corrupted, we'd just have to fight them anyway!"

Amethyst shook her head. "Things are different, it's been five thousand years-"

"Not for them," Garnet pointed out. "They don't know the war's over, or what the Diamonds did, they'd think it was a trick. There's only five of us - six if you count Lapis," she corrected herself. "And we kinda have a situation going on right now. This is not the time to be messing around with bubbled gems."

Amethyst scowled and looked away. Her gaze landed upon Bismuth's bubbled gem and she slumped. She hated to admit it, but Garnet had a point. They hadn't been able to work things out with Bismuth, and she'd been a Crystal Gem. What hope did they have of recruiting loyal Homeworld soldiers to their side when Rose had already tried and failed years before?

Still, Amethyst couldn't quite bring herself to give up on them entirely. "Fine. You're right, now isn't the best time. But when P-dot's cured, we're gonna talk about this some more. This isn't over." And with that, she turned around, marched out of the Temple and sat back down next to Peridot and the tablet that was playing 'American Pie' for the fifth time.

A few minutes later, there was a knock at the front door and Amethyst glanced up to see Connie's blurred form on the other side. "Door's open, come on in," she called out.

Connie pushed the door open and stepped inside, a slightly nervous smile on her face. "Hey. Uh, is Steven awake yet?"

"Nah, he's still out cold." Amethyst grinned at her. "Those ambies really did the trick, huh?"

Connie's nervous smile got a little more wibbly. The pills were supposed to help you get a full eight hours sleep and Steven had been asleep for more than double that. This wasn't the pills work. "Um..." She took a deep breath and forced herself not to look away. "I have to tell you something."

xxx

Steven woke up slowly. His face was turned towards the sun, and the warm light bathed his skin, refusing to be ignored. Finally he opened his eyes and yawned and stretched, feeling his joints pop. He was pleased to find he felt well rested; that didn't usually happen after using his dream powers.

He kicked off the blankets, grabbed some clothes and began heading down the stairs to the bathroom to get dressed when he heard his mother call his name. "Sorry, what was that, Mom?"

Rose smiled and jerked her head towards the fridge. "I just wondered if you'd like me to fix you some breakfast, dear. Or brunch, actually. It's getting kind of late."

"Sure." Steven smiled at her. "That'd be nice."

He stepped into the bathroom and was halfway through unbuttoning his pajama shirt when the thought finally crossed his mind.

_This isn't real._

He slumped in disappointment. Of course this wasn't real. He was never going to meet his mother. He was still dreaming-

He blinked and all of a sudden, he was back in bed, staring up at the ceiling. His limbs felt heavy, and it took all his strength to push off the blanket covering him. Standing up was too much effort, so he simply rolled out of bed instead, landing on the floor with a thump and a groan. "Uuuuugh."

"Stop being such a drama queen, Stee-man," Amethyst called from the lower level. "Come on down already, we've got stuff to do."

"Uuugh." He stared blearily at a dust bunny sitting a few inches from his nose, and then, with monumental effort, he hauled himself upright. "Gimme a minute."

"We don't _have_ a minute," Pearl objected. "The Cluster could emerge at any moment!"

"Yeah, yeah, all right," Steven grumbled. He took a few steps down stairs and then paused. "Wait, emerge?"

"I believe Peridot said something about it destroying the Earth." Garnet pushed her shades up slightly. "So we should probably do something about that."

"But we already did," he said in confusion. "We bubbled it. I mean, yeah, we need to get it out before Yellow Diamond comes looking for it, but it's safe, it's contained."

The three gems stared blankly back at him, and a sudden feeling of dread washed over him. "This is still a dream, isn't it?"

He blinked and then once again, he was in bed, staring up at the ceiling. He tried to move, but he had no strength at all. It took all of his energy to move his head slightly so the sun wasn't entirely in his face. "Uuuuuuuuuuugh. This definitely has to be real now," he mumbled to himself. "I feel too gross to be dreaming."

"Steven, are you all right?" Peridot asked in concern.

"Just groggy." He closed his eyes again and tried to move his arms. "Ugh. Tired. I may need to stay in bed a bit longer."

"Oooh," she giggled. "Would you like company?"

His eyes snapped open again at once and with every last ounce of energy he possessed, he turned his face to look at her. "This isn't real. You're not real."

"Does it matter?" she asked serenely, and stroked his arm.

"Yes." He closed his eyes again. "It does."

He lay there a few minutes longer, eyes closed, trying to work up the nerve to open them again but now terribly afraid that he'd just wind up in another dream. But, he sternly told himself, the only way he was going to move on was by trying, so once again, he forced his eyes open.

This time, it was so much more difficult. He couldn't open them much more than a crack, and the light immediately tried to stab him in the brain. As he screwed up his eyes again in agony, he knew for sure this was really real, none of his other dreams had caused him actual pain. Which was progress, but damn, did it ever hurt.

He waited for the wave of pain and nausea to subside and then tried again. This time, he managed to open them a little wider for a few more seconds, but he didn't manage to see anything more than a few blurry spots before he was forced to close them again.

 _Come on, Steven!_ He screamed internally. He opened a mouth as dry as a desert and took a few deep breaths until he was ready, then tried one more time.

This time, he manged to force his eyes open completely, and grimly ignored the burst of pain until it subsided to a dull ache. For a split second, he thought he'd got it wrong, that he was in another dream, but he quickly realized this wasn't the set of Under The Knife, but an actual real hospital room. He opened his mouth to call out for somebody, but all that came out of his mouth was a faint and garbled "hgughh". Still, it must have done the trick, because a moment later, the door opened.

"Ah, you're awake then," Doctor Maheswaran said mildly. She shone a light into his eyes, much to his displeasure, and then started tapping buttons on a monitor by his bed. "Garnet said you would be."

"Guh?" he mumbled thickly. Then he swallowed, swiped his dry tongue around his mouth and tried again. ""Guhnt?"

Happily Doctor Maheswaran was experienced at deciphering the unintelligible mumblings of woozy patients and knew exactly what he was trying to say. "She's in the waiting room. She wanted to be here when you woke up, but I need to check your stats first." She then poked him with a variety of annoying medical instruments. "Normal. Well. I assume." She raised an eyebrow in his direction. "It's a little difficult to be sure in your case."

Steven tried to speak and failed. He swallowed hard and swiped his bone-dry tongue around the inside of his mouth again. "Wa-uh."

"I can give you some ice chips," she said absently as she jotted down a few notes. "Wait here. I'll be right back."

"Buh-"

It was too late. She'd already left. Steven groaned and slumped back against the pillows. As if he was going anywhere! He could barely move his head! Still, even as the thought crossed his mind, he could feel his strength returning. Even the ache in his head was fading fast. Unfortunately, the inside of his mouth still tasted like ass, and he was relieved when Doctor Maheswaran reappeared only a few short minutes later with a small cup of ice chips. He sucked them gratefully before trying to talk again. "Why am I here?" he croaked. "I was only sleeping."

"True," she said mildly. "But the gems got slightly concerned when you didn't wake up."

That sounded ominous. "How long was I asleep for?" he asked warily.

Doctor Maheswaran fixed him with her steely gaze. "You've been unconscious for around three days now."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I'm back! Sorry for the little hiatus, I'll try and get back on schedule again now.


	6. Chapter 6

"I- what- three- what-?" Steven stammered.

"Three days," Doctor Maheswaran said again and waited to see if the information would sink in this time.

It didn't. Steven stared mutely up at her for several seconds, and then screwed his eyes up again. "This is another dream, this isn't real," he muttered to himself.

"I assure you, this isn't a dream." She crossed her arms and scowled. "If it were, I'd be sitting on a beach in the Caribbean, not heading down to bowel surgery in half an hour."

Steven ignored her and kept his eyes closed, but when he opened them again, she was still stood there, looking down at him. "I don't understand... I was only sleeping."

Doctor Maheswaran rolled her eyes, clearly already bored of this argument. "Yes. For three days." Seeing that he still didn't seem to quite understand, she sighed and elaborated. "I'm not going to pretend I understand how your powers work, I don't know what's normal or abnormal for you. What I _do_ know is that the gems expected you to wake up two days ago, and when you didn't, they concluded that something had gone wrong and brought you here." She gave him another stern look. "You may be half gem, but you seem to forget that you're also half human, and you need to look after that side of yourself as well. You need to eat and drink, and you can't do that if you put yourself in a coma while experimenting with your gem powers."

"I wasn't _experimenting-_ " Steven began, hurt by the accusation, but Doctor Maheswaran wasn't interested and waved away his protests.

"For what it's worth, all of your stats are normal. I'd like to keep you in overnight, just for observation, but I don't imagine there will be a problem unless you decide to try doing... whatever is it you did again." She glanced at her watch again. "I really must head down to surgery now. Do you feel up to having visitors?"

He was deeply tempted to say 'no' so he wouldn't have to face anybody just yet, but he knew if he did that, he'd just worry the gems more. "Yeah, I guess so."

Doctor Maheswaran nodded and left, and less than ten seconds later, Garnet stepped into the room. "Hello, Steven. How are you feeling?"

"Um... much better," he said carefully, trying to sound both strong and healthy, so she wouldn't be worried, but also frail and delicate and in absolutely no condition to be scolded. "I'm sorry I worried you all."

Garnet exhaled loudly and sank into the chair beside his bed. "We weren't just worried, we were _terrified._ We thought... when you didn't wake up..." She paused to compose herself. "What you did was reckless and irresponsible. We don't know enough about corruption for you to take risks like that!"

"I know, I'm sorry," Steven said again, more to placate her than anything else. That done, he could no longer hold back. "It _worked_ though, Garnet! I was able to contact Peridot and talk to her and help her!" And he quickly explained what had happened while he was sleeping.

"Hmm." Garnet leaned back in her chair and mulled over this new information. On the one hand, his stunt had given them more information about corruption than she'd ever expected, information they badly needed if they ever hoped to cure anyone.

But on the other hand... the brief hope that had flared up inside her began to whither as she realized she wasn't entirely sure _how_ that information helped. So Peridot was quite literally trapped in a mental battle against her own fears. How were they supposed to help her from the outside? She rather suspected they couldn't. It was a battle that had to be fought from within...

Behind her shades, she narrowed her eyes at her foster son. She already knew what he wanted to do, and just the thought of it made her queasy with fear. He'd already admitted that he and Peridot hadn't been able to get any closer to the barn door, no matter how hard they tried, and she had a sneaking suspicion it would always remain just slightly out of reach. All he could offer was temporary respite from the battle with his bubble shield. And she suspected that if he went back and found Peridot struggling badly, it would take a while before he could bring himself to take that protection away again. It didn't help that time obviously worked differently in his dreamscape as well. If he could lose track of three days so easily, he could lose track of a week, a month, or more.

It was going to be very difficult to convince him not to go back there again. But for his sake, she had to try. Firstly, by getting him out of this place. The temptation to return would be much stronger now he knew he was in a place where his physical health was being monitored.

She stood up. "Doctor Maheswaran said all your vital signs were normal," she said neutrally. "So I'll ask a nurse to remove your drip and catheter and then we can go home." She spun around and tried to leave before he could stop her, but she hadn't even managed to take a single step before she heard him call her name. Her shoulders slumped and slowly, she turned back round to face him.

"Maybe- maybe I shouldn't go just yet. Doctor Maheswaran said she wanted to keep me in overnight," he said, not quite meeting her eyes.

"Steven..."

"I mean, sure, my vitals are normal _now_ , but I did accidentally fall asleep for three days, so I kinda feel like maybe I should be supervised by doctors again tonight in case, you know, something were to happen. By accident, of course." His eyes flickered towards hers, hidden behind her shades, and immediately darted away again when he caught sight of his guilty reflection. " _Totally_ by accident," he lied badly. "I mean, it's sleep, I can't control it-"

"Steven, please don't try and jump into Peridot's mind again," Garnet interrupted desperately. "It's far too dangerous-"

"I just need to let her know I'm OK!" he protested. "If it was Ruby or Sapphire, would you tell me not to go to back?" He clapped a hand over his mouth at once, appalled. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that, I swear!"

Garnet was silent for a moment as she struggled to stay in sync. "I don't know what I'd do," she said quietly once she'd recovered. "But I hope that if anything happened to them, somebody would step in to stop me if it looked like I was going to hurt myself."

"I know... but it's just sleep," Steven argued. "Admittedly a little more sleep than I expected, but that's why I should try it again while I'm still here and connected to IV fluids and stuff."

"It's not just dehydration I'm worried about, Steven, it's corruption! I know," she added as he opened his mouth. "You said you're immune, but I'm not so sure any more. All that trouble you had waking up, what if it was another form of corruption, but instead of using your fears to trap you, it distracted you and offered you people you love to keep you there?"

Steven shook his head, but deep down, he had to admit she had a point. Still... "It could've just been a coincidence," he suggested. "Loads of people dream they've woken before they really have, it doesn't mean anything. Or," he continued, seeing that she didn't look convinced, "maybe it was the pills Connie gave me. It's their job to help me sleep, so maybe I had like, a bad reaction or something."

Garnet hesitated. It was actually something she'd also suspected, and sensing weakness, Steven pressed on. "Let me try again, just one more time, without the pills. And if it happens again, I won't go back. But I need to go back one more time, to let Peridot know what's happened."

"...Very well," Garnet reluctantly conceded. "But just this once, Steven," she continued sternly. "Have some lunch first. And in the meantime, I believe there's a few people who'd like to come and visit you."

xxx

"And that's the last track from 'Best of 1967'. 1968 coming up. That one was a great year, you're gonna love-" Amethyst broke off her monologue and peered over the edge of the loft as Garnet pushed open the door of the beach house and stepped inside. "Steven?"

"He's awake," Garnet confirmed. "Greg's with him now. If you go and fetch Pearl from the Kindergarten, you can both go and see him before visiting hours end."

"OK." Without any complaint whatsoever, Amethyst jumped to her feet, put Peridot's tablet down on the pillow next to her and ran down the stairs and over to the warp pad, where she vanished in a flash of light.

Garnet watched her leave, and then slowly trudged up the stairs to Steven's room where Peridot had been moved to. For several seconds, she simply stood beside the bed, staring down at the little green gem. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed, summoned her gauntlets and very gently put her hands around Peridot's waist.

It would be so easy to poof her right there and then, Garnet reflected. She'd done it once before, after all. One squeeze was all it would take. It would be quick and painless, and infinitely kinder than leaving her to become fully corrupted.

Plus, of course, Steven couldn't jump into her mind and put himself in a coma again if Peridot was in a bubble.

Her fingers tightened slightly, but when she felt the fragile bones beneath Peridot's skin, she froze. She forgotten that the other gem had last reformed with a human body structure, her innovative way of getting around her inability to shapeshift. She imagined how it would feel to break those bones, to hear them grind and snap. Perhaps it would not be so painless after all. Maybe instead of just poofing into nothing, she'd find herself with handfuls of blood and gore-

She shuddered violently and withdrew her hands. _I can't do this._

 _We_ need _to. For Steven's sake._

Because she knew perfectly well that it wouldn't be 'just one more time'. Sure, he'd _try_ and stay away, at least for a few days, but when he saw that no progress being made out here, he'd jump back into Peridot's mind again and again, until one day, he wouldn't come back. It was inevitable. The only way to stop it was to poof Peridot.

 _Steven will never speak to us again,_ she reminded herself.

 _But he'll be conscious enough to make that decision,_ she then argued back internally.

Her fingers twitched, but she still couldn't quite bring herself to do it, even though a voice inside her was urgently warning her that if she was going to do this, she needed to do it _now_ , before Amethyst and Pearl returned. Pearl would understand where Garnet was coming from, but she'd feel obligated to try and stop her, and Amethyst wouldn't understand at all. And Garnet really didn't want to have to fight either of them.

_He'll survive._

_And he'll be_ miserable _._

Fragmented visions appeared before her. Steven in a hospital bed, trapped in endless sleep. Steven in tears before her, begging her to tell him where she'd hidden Peridot's gem. Greg, gray and wrinkled, sitting at his son's bedside, waiting day after day for his son to wake up. Amethyst shaking a fist at her before walking out, Pearl torn between them all. No matter how hard she looked, she couldn't see a happy ending for anyone.

_What if it was one of us?_

_...I don't know._

She tried to imagine how she'd feel if Ruby or Sapphire were corrupted, but her mind instantly recoiled from the thought. She couldn't do it. They'd been Garnet for too long, the very thought of being without one another was too awful to contemplate.

 _Let's try something different. What do we_ want _to happen next?_

"I want..." Garnet took a deep breath and dismissed her gauntlets. "To try and help." She jumped to her feet, went back down the stairs and into Peridot's room and returned a moment later with a pair of headphones, which she then carefully placed on the other gem's head before plugging the jack into the tablet. "Enjoy your music, Peridot," she muttered, and turned up the volume.


	7. Chapter 7

Steven looked suspiciously at his dinner. It _looked_ harmless enough... but wasn't jello supposed to jiggle? He gave the tray a tentative wobble, and the little bowl of oily jello slid around with an wet s _lorp._ He was tempted to just push it aside and leave it, but the slightly more sensible part of his brain sternly told him that if he planned to try visiting Peridot again, it would be wise to eat first, just in case he wound up oversleeping again.

With that thought, he took a deep breath and sliced the jello in half with the edge of his spoon, but before he could bring himself to put it in his mouth, there was a quiet knock at the door. And before he could say anything, it opened slightly and Connie slipped in. "Hey."

"Hi." He pushed his dinner away with relief. "I thought visiting hours were over?" Either that or the nurses had been lying to get rid of Pearl and Amethyst, which was actually a real possibility seeing as they'd also brought Lion with them.

"They are." She crossed the room and sat down in the chair next to his bed. "But one of the perks of being a doctor's daughter is I get to ignore the rules. Are you gonna eat that?"

"Probably not," he admitted. "You want it?"

"Yeah, I like hospital jello. It's all squidgy," she said cheerfully and reached out for the little plastic tub and slurped it down. "So..." she began, putting the tub back down and licking her lips. "How are you feeling? And how did it go?"

"Other than the three day nap? Actually not so bad." And he quickly explained how he'd been able to meet up with Peridot and help her defend against her corruption.

"Huh." Connie sat back and mulled over that information for a moment. "That's good, I guess," she said a little doubtfully. "Worth everybody being mad at me."

"They were mad at you?" Steven asked in surprise and then wondered why he was surprised. Of course they were mad.

"They weren't happy I gave you those pills when I knew what you were trying to do," Connie confirmed. "I did try and explain that I was actually hoping they'd stop you from doing it – sorry about that by the way – but yeah, they were all pretty angry. Mom even took back all my other sleeping pills. But on the bright side, it doesn't look like anyone's going to try setting us up as a couple any more, so there's that." She leaned forward again and peered hopefully at his dinner tray in case there was anything else she could eat, but everything else was an unappetizing beige mush and she sat back again is disappointment. "So why did you stay asleep so long? Did you just lose track of time in her headspace or something?"

"Something like that, I guess," he said vaguely, and decided not to mention Garnet's theories about corruption or the possibility that the pills really had messed up his dream powers.

"You really scared us," she scolded. "If you'd stayed awake another day, I really think they would've tried scratching messages into your skin-"

Steven's eyebrows shot up into his hairline. "Excuse me, what!?"

"We were trying to think of ways of getting you to snap out of it," she quickly explained. "Because obviously we didn't know what was going on in there. And Amethyst suggested maybe it was like Total Recall or something, and maybe you didn't _know_ you were asleep, so I suggested scratching 'wake up' in your arm - with a sterile needle of course, so you wouldn't get an infection – I figured the pain might make your subconscious mind display it in your dream too..." She trailed off at the horrified look on his face. "Look, it was either that or try fusing with you, and I didn't wanna do that and maybe wind up making things worse."

"Yeah, that definitely sounds like the worst of two awful ideas," Steven said, wrinkling his nose up in distaste.

"Well, if you don't want 'wake up you're scaring us' carved up your arm like it was written with Umbridge's quill, I suggest you don't try that again," Connie said sternly. Steven blushed and looked away, and she groaned loudly. "Steven!"

"It's OK, Garnet knows this time!" he hastily reassured her.

"That doesn't make it better!" she snapped back. "Steven, you are in _hospital!_ " She waved around the room for emphasis. "Don't you think that's just a _little_ bit of a warning sign that maybe this is too dangerous for you to be doing again right now!?"

"I'll be fine," he insisted. "Now I know what happened, I'll be able to stop it happening again." _I hope,_ he added internally, and crossed his fingers behind his back.

Connie sighed and slumped back in her chair, defeated. "Do... do you want to try doing it as Stevonnie?" she asked tentatively.

To her relief, he shook his head at once. "At this point, it's probably safer if there's fewer people messing around in Peridot's head. We could end up making things worse. You might even miss college."

"Do you promise?" she deadpanned. "Nah, that wouldn't happen, my mom would _definitely_ start carving up our arms. I can see it now, 'Connie wake up right now, we did not spend $25,000 on college for you to spend the entire semester asleep.'"

He laughed and then shook his head again. "Thanks, but no."

"I can't say I'm sorry to hear that," she admitted. "So... are you planning to go back to sleep right now, or do you have time to watch some TV or something?"

"If it's all right with you," he began in an apologetic tone, "I think I'd like to go back to sleep now. I don't want to leave her alone too long, I have no idea if my bubble shield will work without me there."

"OK." She gave him a rather wobbly smile. "Just... come back quickly this time. And bring Peridot with you. I'm supposed to go back in a week and there's no way I'm gonna be able to concentrate on classes with you guys in a shared coma."

xxx

As it turned out, Steven's bubble shield _was_ still working. However Peridot had absolutely no idea how long it would continue to do so, and as a consequence, she had not moved since he'd vanished. Even though she knew she'd make no progress by doing nothing, she simply didn't dare do anything but stay still and try to concentrate on the faint hum of the music that was just ever-so-slightly out of earshot. For all she knew, that would be all it took for the bubble to pop, and then she'd be back battling the fusion creatures again. Not moving wouldn't make things better, but hopefully, it wouldn't make things worse. And until Steven came back and told her what was going on, that was good enough for her.

"You really think he's coming back?"

Peridot let out a scream of fright and spun around to see the form of Yellow Diamond towering over her, an expression of disgust on her face. "You're not here, you're not real!" But even so, she couldn't stop herself from backing away until she hit the wall of the bubble.

"Of course I'm real." Yellow Diamond took a step towards her, flattening several of the fusion experiments as she did so. "I helped to create this charming little weapon, after all. Do you really think we wouldn't find a way to see who it had affected?"

Something about that statement didn't seem to quite make sense, but before Peridot could think about it, Yellow Diamond took another step forward and, forgetting her earlier fears, Peridot threw herself back against the side of the bubble to try and move it a bit further away.

"I have to admit, I honestly thought I'd destroyed you after you pulled that stunt with the communicator," Yellow Diamond continued relentlessly. "Oh, I know the Rubies said you were alive, but you know Rubies." And she laughed derisively. "But this! How much more satisfying it is to see your futile battle against corruption."

"This is not a futile battle," Peridot said grimly. "I'm going to win."

"No you're not." Yellow Diamond looked almost amused. "Better gems than you have tried and failed."

Peridot's eyes flickered away, because of course, it was true. But... "They didn't have Steven's help."

"Hmm? Oh, you mean Rose Quartz's strange new form-"

"No, I meant Steven," Peridot corrected. Yellow Diamond narrowed her eyes menacingly, and she let out a small squeak of fright. "He-he's not Rose!" she managed to stammer out. "He's his own gem!"

"With her powers," Yellow Diamond pointed out. "Do you really think she didn't have this power to enter the minds of other gems as well? And yet, she still failed to heal anybody."

Peridot shook her head, trying to sort out her muddled thoughts. She _knew_ some of Steven's powers were unique, but with Yellow Diamond looming over her, it was several seconds before she could remember what they were. "He can fuse with humans! Rose couldn't do that," she said triumphantly. "And this- this mind hopping power requires him to be asleep, so even if Rose Quartz _did_ have it, she might not have ever tried sleeping and discovered it! None of the other Crystal Gems have ever said she could do it, after all."

"Really, Peridot. Do you honestly think they'd bother to tell you if she did?" Yellow Diamond laughed contemptuously. "Have you already forgotten the words of the renegade Pearl? You're not one of them. You'll never _be_ one of them. And they'll never let Rose come back here. They'll destroy your form before they let that happen." She suddenly leaned forward and spoke again in a softer tone. "Why don't you just give up? Lower the shield. Succumb to corruption. You'll never be able to beat it, and you'll be of far more use to them as a monster than you ever were as a gem."

Peridot blinked and then narrowed her eyes defiantly. "No. You're not real. The _real_ Yellow Diamond would never have simply called me 'Peridot' as if I were an individual!"

The thing that wasn't Yellow Diamond stared down at her in silence for several seconds, and then a small smile twitched at the corner of her lips. "You're right. I'm not real," she said quietly, and then leaned down so that her face was just on the other side of the bubble. "But that doesn't mean I wasn't telling the truth-"

At that moment, Steven suddenly reappeared. "Peridot-whoa!" He ran forward, summoning his shield as he did so, which he threw at Yellow Diamond, where it bounced off her face with a very satisfying _clang._ Peridot let out an astonished bark of laughter, but before she could really savor the expression on her ex-Diamond's face, Steven shoved his way through the bubble's membrane and started pushing at the other side. "Come on, let's get out of here!"

Peridot obediently pushed against the bubble as well, her earlier fears forgotten now that he was back. Once again, the door of the barn stayed just out of reach, but when she risked looking back over her shoulder, Yellow Diamond has shrank into the distance. "I believe we're out of immediate danger now."

Steven glanced back as well, and then relaxed. "Oh good. That was a nasty surprise. What was she even doing here?"

"Being a clod," Peridot grumbled. "She tried to convince me she was-" She stopped suddenly and her eyes widened as a truly horrible thought occurred to her. "Prove you're real!" she demanded, taking a step away from him. "Tell me something only Steven would know!"

Steven's mind instantly want blank. "Uhhhhhh..." He stared at her, desperately trying to thing of something, anything, but there was nothing. "I-I don't know! I wasn't expecting a pop quiz!" he flailed. "Uhh... you hate Paulette- no, everyone knows that, that's stupid, come on Steven..."

Peridot's expression softened and she stepped back forward and hugged him. "I was expecting a step-by-step recollection of our first kiss," she murmured. "So you're _definitely_ Steven."

"I'm not entirely sure if that's a compliment," he said warily, but hugged her back. He couldn't really be offended that she hadn't known it was him; after all, he'd had similar problems in his mother's room. "Maybe we should come up with a code word or something in case this happens again?"

"Hmm." Peridot wrinkled her nose. "I'm not sure how much use that would be in this sort of situation, surely the duplicate would be aware of the code word as well?"

"That's true," he admitted. "I guess- no, they'd know that too." He tried to think of a solution, but of course, it was impossible. "How did you know it wasn't Yellow Diamond?" he asked, trying to figure out if that would help.

"There were a few clues, but what really gave it away was when she called me 'Peridot'", she explained. "I believe I'd become so accustomed to being addressed without my full cut and facet that it completely slipped my mind that Homeworld would still use it to address me."

Steven nodded slowly. "So all I have to do is try and think of something you've forgotten."

"Easy. All you have to do then is find my IC popper," she said dryly. "I put it down somewhere and I can't remember where."

"Sure." Steven smiled with relief and made a mental note to look up what exactly a IC popper actually _was._ "Anyway, how are you, were you OK when I left?"

"Other that Yellow Diamond showing up? Actually, I was fine," she admitted. "Your bubble shield was extremely helpful in keeping the fusion experiments at bay."

"It stayed? That's great news!" he exclaimed.

Peridot grinned and decided not to tell him she hadn't actually risked moving. "What about you?" she asked, changing the subject. "Did you have any problems awakening? Does your head hurt at all? Do you have any strange blemishes?"

"I'm completely fine," he said, which was _technically_ true. "The gems were a little concerned when I overslept, but they're happy I was able to contact you, and they know I'm here this time. Although," he grudgingly admitted, "I can't really stay as long this time, they were a little freaked out."

"Oh." Peridot tried not to look as disappointed as she felt. "I suppose that's understandable. How long do you think you can remain here?"

"Long enough to get this bubble moving," he said firmly. "Come on, let's see if we can get out of this place this time."

Peridot still wasn't convinced they'd make any progress, but it was better than doing nothing while Yellow Diamond tried to mess with her head, so she joined him and once again, they began rolling the bubble across the barn floor.

Sure enough, the barn door didn't get any closer. But all of a sudden, Peridot stopped and tilted her head, listening hard. "Steven! Listen!"

"What?" He stopped as well, and suddenly realized that the music was getting louder. What had once been nothing more than a dim, unidentifiable background hum was now... well, a dim, unidentifiable background drone instead. But surely that was progress! "Come on!" he cried, and grabbed her by the hand in excitement. "Let's see if we can figure out what song it is!"

Encouraged, Peridot forgot her earlier doubts entirely and the two of them started moving again, picking up speed until the fusion experiments outside were little more than a blur. At first, there wasn't any noticeable difference; the barn door still stayed out of reach and the music was still an unidentifiable noise. But sure enough, it got louder. The drone became a buzz. There was a faint but definite tune. The words were still a mumbled unintelligible mess, but Peridot thought that if they slowed down now, they might actually be able to hear it, and so she tapped Steven on the shoulder. "Let's stop. I want to try and listen now."

Steven nodded and brought the bubble to a halt and the two of them strained to hear the faint lyrics.

"...day... I watch... say... lucky... like her... true..."

Peridot frowned and turned to her boyfriend. "I don't recognize this."

"Ah, yeah, Amethyst did say she was playing the top tracks from each year now. Actually," he corrected, "what she really said was that if she had to listen to American Pie one more time, she would've thrown your tablet in the ocean for real this time."

"I _like_ American Pie," she said crossly.

Steven laughed. "Well, now we can hear it better, I'll ask her to put your music back on when I get back, OK?"

"OK," she agreed, mollified. "Are you going now?"

Steven hesitated. He didn't want to stop now they'd come so close, but there was no way of knowing how long he'd been here already and he didn't want to push his luck. "I guess I should. But I'll come back as soon as I can, I promise."

"OK," she said again, and hugged him tight. "But make sure you don't neglect to take care of yourself as well," she added sternly. "I shall be fine by myself for the time being. I have your bubble, after all."

"I'll order takeout and have a nice, relaxing bubble bath before I come back," he promised, and gave her a kiss. "Love you."

"I love you too," she whispered, and stood back and watched as he faded away. Then she steeled her shoulders, set her sights on the barn door and began pushing at the wall of the bubble again. She couldn't move the bubble as fast on her own, she didn't have the strength, but it did roll along at a steady pace, the spikes stabbing and poofing the fusion experiments that tried to grab at the bubble.

She couldn't tell how long she'd been moving, but after a while, she realized she could hear the music more clearly from inside the bubble. She slowed down slightly and discovered to her delight, that she could now actually properly hear the lyrics. It still wasn't a song from her playlist, but at that point, she didn't really care.

She picked up speed again. The music became clearer. Every now and then, a song came on that she recognized. Without even meaning to, she found herself singing along to 'Dancing Queen."

And then suddenly, there was silence. She slowed down again, wondering if perhaps Steven had managed to persuade Amethyst to put her music back on, but when the music resumed, it was something else entirely. Peridot stumbled to a halt and for at least a full minute, she just stood there, enchanted, letting the melody wash over her.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that the fusion experiments had stopped as well. She blinked and leaned forward, pressing her nose against the membrane, but sure enough, none of them were moving. She tentatively moved forward, fully expecting them to start grabbing at the bubble again, but nothing happened, not even when deliberately swerved towards some.

Hope flared up within her. She picked up speed. Was it her imagination, or was the barn door actually getting closer now? No, it really was. She broke out into a run, not even noticing as the bubble shield thinned and then vanished, because nothing was trying to hold her back any more. It was just her and the music. And with a final burst of speed, she crossed the threshold of the door, into the light.


	8. Chapter 8

"I hate to admit it, but Greg really has composed... what was it you said, a banger?"

Amethyst nodded, absently swaying along to the tune that could just be heard leaking from Peridot's headphones. "It's a banger, all right." Then she frowned down at the unconscious green gem. "But I don't know if it's working, it's been on repeat for like, an hour now. How long should we leave it on for?"

Pearl drummed her fingers thoughtfully on her chin. "Well, if it isn't working, there's nothing we can do about it until Greg comes back from the hospital."

Amethyst nodded and then gave Peridot a stern look. "OK, P-dot, if this doesn't work, I'm afraid it's back to the 'Best of 1984' for you. Geez, we started at 1950," she added to herself. "You've been asleep for 34 years now."

"What!?" Peridot sat bolt upright and stared at Amethyst in horror.

Amethyst promptly responded with a piercing scream and punched her in the face before she could stop herself. "Oh my God! Oh shit! Fuck! Sorry!"

Pearl reacted slightly more sensibly and pulled Amethyst out of reach before she could do any more damage. "Get some ice, then get Garnet. In that order. Are you all right?" she asked, turning back to Peridot, eyes wide with disbelief. Behind her, Amethyst hurled herself off the loft in her haste to do as she was told.

"Whad dib she meam, thirdy-four years?" Peridot demanded, ignoring both the question and the blood dripping from her swollen nose. "I've missed the Bite Club finale!?" Another more serious thought occurred to her and her eyes filled with tears. "Steben will be _old_! I wab supposed to _be_ dere-"

"It hasn't been 34 years!" Pearl rushed to reassure her. "Amethyst was referring to the music she was playing for you, that's all. Are you all right?" she asked again urgently. "How are you feeling? Any nausea? Pain? Other than your nose," she added as Peridot glared at her.

"I feel... fine," Peridot noted, absently dabbing at her nose with a corner of the blanket, much to Pearl's disgust. "Much better. Ober than by dose," she acknowledged.

"Hmm." Pearl narrowed her eyes. "You do still have the spots though. You should keep the headphones on for now. Just in- what is that?" she asked warily as Amethyst returned with something wrapped in a towel.

"Peas. From the freezer," Amethyst said, holding the bundle out towards Peridot.

Pearl snatched it away at once, scandalized. "You can't use _food,_ it'll get contaminated!" She stomped down the stairs and a few moments later, they heard the sound of the freezer door slamming and then the warp pad chimed as Pearl warped to the North in search of actual ice.

Amethyst huffed and then turned back to Peridot. "Sorry about your nose. You made me jump, I wasn't expecting you to wake up so soon."

Peridot narrowed her eyes suspiciously. That sounded promising, but then again, considering how long all the other gems had been corrupted, 'so soon' could just as easily mean twenty years. "How long wab I corrubted?"

"About a week and a half," Amethyst replied.

"Oh." Peridot relaxed slightly. That wasn't too bad at all. Not even enough time for the Royal Romances Winter Special to air. She dabbed at her nose again and then paused and looked around, finally realizing where she was. "Where's Steben?"

xxx

Steven turned a slow circle in front of the mirror and nodded solemnly. "As I suspected, I have not suddenly grown two inches taller and six inches wider overnight, and my suit still fits just as well as it did when we checked yesterday."

"To be fair," Connie said cheerfully, "That sort of thing has happened to you before, especially around emotionally charged events. And what could be a more emotionally charged event than your wedding?"

"That's true," he admitted with a grin. A grin that got even wider when he remembered that he was getting married in the morning. "I'm getting married in the morning!"

"You're getting married in the morning!" Connie repeated with glee, and they grabbed hands and jumped around for a moment before they were forced to stop in case Steven accidentally jumped them through the roof. "Ahhh I'm so happy for you both! I wanna get married now as well!"

Steven gasped loudly. "You should totally do that! You should ask Alice right now and we could have a double wedding tomorrow!"

Connie laughed. "Tomorrow's probably a bit soon for us to get married. But I _could_ propose." She pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Would I be stealing your thunder if I put a ring in the bouquet and Peridot threw it to Alice?"

"You wouldn't be _stealing_ our thunder, you'd be _sharing_ it," he said emphatically. "Do you wanna go look at rings after we're done here?"

"I shouldn't." Connie paused. "But I will."

She waited for him to change back into his regular clothes and then they began walking through the town, towards the jewelry stores. "What time are Sadie and Lars arriving?" she asked, pressing her nose against the glass window.

Steven glanced at his phone. "I've got about an hour before I have to start heading back."

"Plenty of time then," Connie said happily.

"Are you sure?" he said a little doubtfully. "It took me ages to pick-"

"I want that one," Connie interrupted, pointing at a simple ring in the middle of the display. She marched inside and reappeared a few minutes later, holding the little box in her hands. "I can't believe I'm actually going to do this!"

"It's going to be so cool," Steven said happily. "Come on, let's go back now and tell Peridot."

Back at the beach house, chaos reigned. Down on the sand, Amethyst and Jasper were struggling to put up an enormous marquee while Pearl stood to one side to let them know everything they were doing was wrong. A little further along, Lapis was making ice sculptures with her water powers. Steven gave her a wave, and then had to jump to avoid a flood of weeds that had suddenly popped up at his feet.

"Sorry!" One of the recently freed Rose Quartzes sped past him and started frantically stomping on the blossoms. "Not used to having plant powers. Still getting the hang of-"

"I got this." Centipeedle, uncorrupted and totally healed, opened her mouth and spat acid at the plants until all that was left was a steaming greasy smudge on the ground. "Try again now."

"You're kidding me, right?" The Rose Quartz looked at the mess in dismay. "How am I supposed to make anything grow out of _that_!?"

Steven and Connie left them to their argument and climbed the stairs to the beach house where Steven took a moment to marvel again at the changes to the interior. Bismuth had done some tinkering to the internal structure, and now the inside was at least twenty times bigger than the outside. Somehow that still didn't seem to be enough room for all the chairs. Bismuth evidently agreed, and was hammering at one of the walls with a shapeshifted arm, trying to push it further back. "Hey," she greeted, waving at them with her other hand. "If you're looking for your fiancee, she's in the back, going over the seating plans."

"Again?" He shook his head and walked swiftly down the aisle towards the door at the other end. It was slightly ajar, and so he knocked gently on it before pushing it open fully. "Peridot?"

"Steven!" Peridot's tired eyes lit up at the sight of him. She tossed a handful of notecards onto the table in front of her, jumped to her feet and ran towards him. "You have to help me!"

He laughed and opened his arms, allowing her to fall into his embrace. "What's the problem? I thought we got all the seating sorted three days ago?"

"We did," she said, her voice muffled by his chest. "And then you healed another thirty gems." She tilted her face up and gave him an accusatory glare. "And White Diamond has just sent word that her 'plus one' will in fact be a 'plus twelve'."

"Oh dear." Connie grimaced in sympathy. "I can see how that would mess up the arrangements a bit."

Peridot nodded glumly. "I have been working on this for three hours now."

"So..." Steven began. "Is this perhaps a bad time to ask if Connie can put an engagement ring in the bouquet so she can propose to Alice?"

Connie groaned and massaged her temples. "Are you _quite_ sure you want to marry him?"

Peridot narrowed her eyes and studied them both for a moment. "Help me fix this mess and you can put as many rings as you like in the bouquet."

"Just the one is fine," Connie said, but she pulled up a chair obediently.

They worked for an hour, and just as they were finishing up, they heard a commotion from the other room. "Ah, that must be Lars and Sadie," Steven exclaimed.

Sure enough, Lars and Sadie were stood just inside the house, staring around open-mouthed. "Oh! Steven, hi!" Sadie called when she caught sight of him, "Wow, look at this place!"

"Instead of paying me for this wedding cake, can you send whoever did this to expand our apartment?" Lars asked, only half-joking.

"I think your landlord might have some objections," Steven pointed out.

"That's a bummer." Lars pouted and shifted his infant daughter from one hip to the other. "There's room for us, and room for all of Janey-Lee's baby crud, but not both."

"Don't worry, he's exaggerating," Sadie said in a loud whisper. "Come on, give her here and show Steven and Peridot their cake. Come on, Janey, come to momma." She held out her arms and Lars handed the baby over. "Oof, you're getting big now!"

"Baaaababababa," Janey-Lee said solemnly, and then blew a raspberry in her mother's face.

"Oh, she's so _cute,_ " Connie sighed. "Can I hold her?"

"Sure. Let me just..."

The two of them moved aside, talking quietly among themselves. Steven stared at Janey-Lee for a moment, and then shook his head and turned his attention back to Lars, who was now reaching into the portal in his head. "Ta-da," he said proudly, removing an enormous cake box that was easily four times as big as his skull. "I'll be keeping it in here until tomorrow," he said, carefully removing the lid. "The atmosphere in there is great for keeping stuff fresh."

"Yeah, I used to put the grocery shopping in Lion's mane," Steven agreed. "Only problem was, he'd sometimes vanish for like, a month. With the shopping- oh _wow_ , that's _amazing!_ "

"Ooooh," Peridot breathed beside him. "It's _beautiful._ "

Lars blushed with pleasure as the happy couple admired his creation, a four tier cake designed to look like a geode. Pink crystals on one side and green on the other, meeting in the middle to form a greeny-brown cluster that represented their Tourmaline fusion. "It's no big deal, it looks more complicated than it is-"

"Don't sell yourself short, Lars," Steven scolded. "It's gorgeous and we love it and we love you for making it for us."

"Oh, well in that case, it was very tricky and complex and not many bakers would be able to pull it off," Lars bragged. "So if you know anyone else who might be needing a fancy cake any time soon, give them my number. Seriously though," he added sternly, "Give them my number, I need the money to get my business up and running so I can keep my daughter in diapers."

"Will do," Steven promised. He watched as Lars walked back over to Sadie and Connie and took back his daughter, and made a mental note to pass that message on to Connie. Maybe he could even offer to hire Lars's services as a wedding present. "Great cake, right?" he said to Peridot.

"Great," she confirmed, a small frown on her face. "Small query. Do the new gems know about cake that looks like rocks, or should I go and educate them before they start panicking when we cut it open?"

"Ooh, good point. Go on. I'll finalize the seating arrangements." But instead of heading back to the room, he found himself making his way over to join his friends again. Lars was pretending to be cross with Janey-Lee, and every time he spoke sternly to her, she laughed and kicked her chubby little legs with delight.

"Isn't she adorable?" a familiar voice said behind him, and he turned around to see Pink Diamond staring at the child, a wistful look upon her face. "It so exciting to think one day she'll stop being small and she'll grow up and start walking and talking. Her life's going to be full of so many possibilities." She sighed. "She's so lucky to be a human being." She reached down and ruffled his hair. "Just like you."

"Uh. Yeah." A strange sense of deja-vu washed over him and he frowned and moved away slightly, but Pink Diamond didn't seem to notice. Instead, she leaned down and started pulling faces at the baby until they were both in fits of laughter. "Hey," he said quietly, pulling Connie aside. "Do you want to come and sort out this ring now?"

The next few hours passed in a blur of wedding prep, but finally, just as the sun was setting, everything came together. He stepped outside and looked around at the marquee, now up to Pearl's standards. Beautiful flowers decorated the supports and ice statues dotted the sand. Gems stood around, chatting to each other and he smiled to see everybody getting along. It was something he'd never thought he'd see.

He yawned widely and rubbed his eyes. It had been a long day, and tomorrow was going to be even longer. It might be wise to get an early night. He said goodnight to a few people, and then retired to the new room he shared with Peridot. He'd just closed his eyes when he heard the door open and close again and soft footsteps padded across the floor towards him. "Hi," Peridot whispered softly, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "Can I join you?"

Steven smiled. "It's bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding," he murmured.

"Then close your eyes again," she scolded at once.

Steven laughed but did as he was told. A moment later, she slipped between the covers and snuggled close to his side. He rolled over slightly and gave her a quick peck on the cheek, and then began idly twirling her hair between his fingers. "Just think. Tomorrow you'll be Mrs Universe."

"Mmm." He felt her smile. "I can't wait."

"Me neither." He yawned sleepily. "Tomorrow's going to be the best day of our lives..."

xxx

A knock on the door awoke him and he opened his eyes to see Connie poke her head around the door frame. "Hey, are you decent? Hurry up and get dressed," she continued before he could answer. "You've got your suit fitting in an hour."

He sat up slowly, blinking in confusion. "Didn't I do that yesterday?"

"Yeah, but you're getting married tomorrow," she reminded him. "They need to check you haven't grown six inches overnight or something."

He immediately ignored the strange woozy feeling in the back of his head and jumped out of bed at once. It wasn't important. He had too much to do. He was getting married tomorrow.


	9. Chapter 9

Steven stared thoughtfully at his reflection. The suit still fitted, just as it had the day before. Hadn't he tried it on the day before that as well? He couldn't remember. "Still fits. Just like yesterday."

"Well you can't blame them for checking," Connie said cheerfully. "It wouldn't be the first time you've grown overnight, especially around an emotionally charged event-"

"And what could be a more emotionally charged event than my wedding?" he finished.

"Exactly." Connie grinned widely. "You're getting married in the morning!"

Steven stared at his reflection again. "Yeah," he said slowly. "In the morning."

xxx

Peridot stared down at her boyfriend in his hospital bed. If she forcibly ignored the wires and tubes attached to his body, he looked just like he was sleeping. Which if the medical reports were to be believed, was exactly what was happening. Except people didn't usually sleep for... "How long has he been this way?"

"A week," Greg said dully.

"A _WEEK!?_ " she screeched in horrified outrage. "Wha- where are the doctors!? Why aren't they here, doing something? What could _possibly_ be more important than Steven's health!?"

"I asked that same question," Pearl admitted. "And according to Connie's mother, the answer is 'repairing a torn aorta in an eight-year old child.'"

"There's nothing really they _can_ do," Amethyst added. "He's not actually in a coma or anything, he hasn't taken any drugs or been deprived of oxygen or suffered head trauma. He's just... asleep."

"We know he has trouble waking after using his dream powers," Pearl continued. "So perhaps he just lost track of time when he was with you. Now you're awake, he should wake up as well any minute now!" And she peered hopefully at him in case saying it was enough to make it happen.

To her annoyance, Steven remained resolutely asleep.

"Give it a little longer," Amethyst suggested, patting her on the arm. "P-dot only woke up like, half an hour ago and we were piping music in her ears for an hour before that."

"Maybe... do you think it would be OK to ask the doctor to take another look at him?" Greg said timidly. "Just to see if there's any change now that Peridot's better?"

The Crystal Gems hesitated, but Peridot, who had not been present when Connie's mother had lost her temper with Pearl for calling her five times in an hour, lunged for the alarm and pressed it hard.

"I suppose we can always blame it on her," Pearl murmured as they heard footsteps approaching.

"Well yeah, it's true," Amethyst whispered back, but as the door opened and Doctor Maheswaran stepped into the room, they both stepped behind Greg, just in case.

"Yes, what it is?" she asked, thinly-veiled irritation in her voice.

"Steven requires further examination," Peridot announced, gesturing towards him as she spoke.

"This happened because he was using his dream powers to contact Peridot," Garnet quickly explained as Doctor Maheswaran frowned. "Now that she's awake, the connection should be broken. Would you mind taking a look at him to see if there's any change?"

Doctor Maheswaran's expression softened. "Oh, I see. Very well then. If you could just give me a few minutes?"

The little group left the room, some a little more reluctant than others, and waited impatiently in the hallway for her to let them in again. It was only ten minutes, but it felt at least ten times longer. But finally, she poked her head around the door frame and beckoned them back in.

"Well, right now, there's no change in his condition," Doctor Maheswaran said, getting straight to the point. "But as I've said to you before, I have no idea how his gem powers work and I'm not willing to make any guesses as to when he'll wake up. However, he's still completely stable, which I believe is a good sign, and there does appear to be a slight improvement to the rash-"

"Rash?" Garnet and Peridot interrupted in unison.

"Oh, yeah, Doctor Maheswaran told me she spotted a faint rash on him a couple of days ago," Greg spoke up.

"I took swabs and sent them down to the lab," Doctor Maheswaran said, flicking through her notes to find the relevant information. "Let's see... oh, yes, the results were inconclusive. Probably just a heat rash. He was prescribed a topical steroid treatment. I have to go and do my rounds now, but I'll tell the nurses to check his vitals every half an hour and to let me know if there's any change." And before anybody could question her further, she swept out of the room.

Garnet turned on Greg at once. "What do you mean, he has a rash!? Where!? Why didn't you tell us!?"

"She- she said it's just a heat rash," Greg stammered, taken by surprise. "I didn't think it was important-"

"Not important!?" Pearl butted in shrilly. "Have you _seen_ Peridot!?"

"Yeah, homegirl looks like someone flicked a loaded paintbrush at her," Amethyst added, pointing accusingly at the other gem. Peridot flushed and shrank into her sweater as Greg turned to stare at her. "And you didn't think to tell us that Steven's got spots too?"

"Wait, are you saying you think he might be corrupted!?" Greg shook his head in disbelief. "He can't be, you all said so, the song doesn't affect humans. Yeah, I know, he's half gem," he added as Garnet opened her mouth. "But his human side's always protected him from this sort of stuff before."

"That's true," Garnet grudgingly admitted, recalling how he'd freed her Ruby and Sapphire from Peridot's ship several years earlier. "But still, we can't afford to ignore this-"

"The song!" Peridot blurted out. "It worked for me," she hastily explained as everyone turned to look at her. "If Steven truly is showing signs of corruption, then it should work for him too. Or maybe just the noise will be enough to wake him up."

"I suppose it can't hurt to try," Pearl acknowledged. "I'll go and fetch the tablet."

"Uh, _I'll_ fetch it," Amethyst objected at once, who over the last few weeks had come to think of the tablet as her responsibility.

"You can both go and get it," Garnet butted in before a fight could break out. "Quickly, please."

Neither of them looked particularly pleased with that instruction, but they left the room with minor grumbling. Shortly afterwards, Greg excused himself, partly because the silence was making him uncomfortable and partly because his need to pee was making him more uncomfortable still.

For a few more seconds, Garnet and Peridot continued to sit in silence, and then Peridot finally tore her gaze away from Steven's face. "Do... do you really think he could be corrupted?" she asked.

"I think it's a possibility," Garnet admitted. "He had trouble waking up the first time and I suspected then that it could be corruption, but he persuaded me otherwise."

"He assured me that he was fine." Peridot groaned and closed her eyes briefly, feeling sick with guilt. She should've tried harder to send him away, she silently admonished herself, but she'd just been so relieved to have him there. "You should've poofed me before he could return."

Garnet fell silent again. "I almost did," she finally confessed. "I had my hands around your waist, all I had to do was squeeze. But I couldn't go through with it."

"Oh." Peridot blinked and inched away slightly. She hadn't quite expected Garnet to agree with her and it was a little unnerving to hear how close she'd been to being poofed. Still... "I suppose I would've understood your reasoning."

"Hmm." Garnet smiled faintly. "Unfortunately, nobody else would've. Steven remaining asleep for an indefinite amount of time was actually one of the better futures I saw."

"Oh," Peridot said again. She turned her attention back to Steven again and bit her lip. "Did you happen to see any where he woke up?"

"No," Garnet said flatly. "But," she continued, "for what it's worth, I didn't see any where _you_ woke up either. So I have to admit, I'm a lot more hopeful now than I was twenty-four hours ago. There's no reason why Greg's song shouldn't cure Steven the way it did you. Or even-"

But then she reigned herself in. It was too soon to hope that the song could cure everyone. Right now she would settle for curing Steven.

xxx

"You're getting married in the morning!" Connie squealed with delight.

"Yeah," Steven said absently, massaging his brow to try and ease ache behind his eyes. "Bet you wish you were getting married tomorrow as well."

Connie's eyes lit up. "Tomorrow's probably a bit soon for us to get married, but I _could_ propose," she suggested.

"Yeah. Ow." He winced and closed his eyes for a moment. "You could put a ring in the bouquet and have Peridot throw it to..." He trailed off. "I've never met Alice, have I?"

"No," Connie said serenely. "Her family live on the other side of the state, she generally visits them when we're not at college."

"But she's met your family, right?" he pressed. Surely Connie wouldn't propose to somebody her parents had never met-

"Of course, Mom and Dad met her when they came to visit me," Connie said before the thought had even finished crossing his mind. "And she _did_ come to Beach City once, but you had a gem thing going on?"

"Yeah?" He frowned, trying to remember-

"Yeah, it was when Peridot was corrupted. You slept right through her visit."

"Oh." Steven fell silent and stepped back into the dressing room to change back into his regular clothes. Still, something was bothering him. "Do you have a photo of her?" he asked once he'd stepped back outside.

For the first time, Connie looked uncertain. "Um... maybe. She's a bit camera shy," she said hesitantly. "So I haven't got any good ones of her-"

"Can I see anyway?" Suddenly it seemed very important that he see a picture of Alice.

"...OK," Connie relented, scrolling through her phone and looking rather unhappy about it. "But I warn you, they're not very good."

She was right. The few photographs of Alice were badly blurred and out of focus. It was impossible to even make out the color of her hair. Steven swiped through them, trying to find one that didn't look like the phone had been dropped halfway through taking it, but they were all equally terrible and in the end he gave up and handed the phone back. "I guess I'll finally meet her tomorrow," he mumbled. Still, it bothered him that he didn't know what Connie's girlfriend of two years looked like.

They stopped outside a jewelry store and Connie pressed her nose against the window. "When-"

"In about an hour," Steven said without thinking. Then he blinked and shook his head. "Sorry, what was that?"

"I was gonna ask what time Sadie and Lars were arriving," Connie said slowly. "But I guess you already answered that. Still," she added brightly, turning her attention back to the window, "that's plenty of time."

Steven looked at the window and found his eyes drawn towards a simple ring in the middle of the display. Somehow he wasn't surprised when Connie pointed to it and stated that it was the ring she wanted.

They walked back to the house is silence. Connie tried to initiate conversation several times, but Steven was deep in his own thoughts and she quickly gave up. As they walked across the sand towards the house, Steven slowed down a little and stared at Jasper as she tried to help Amethyst put up the marquee. How had they cured her and brought her over to their side? He couldn't quite remember.

Come to think of it, how had they cured Peridot of _her_ corruption? Connie had said that was when he'd slept through Alice's visit, and he _could_ recall using his dream powers to contact her, but after that...

Despite the fact that it was a beautiful, sunny day, he suddenly felt cold. He stumbled to a halt and looked around again, and everywhere he looked, something was wrong. Lapis was working next to Jasper, and neither of them were showing any sign of discomfort about it. The Rose Quartz gems from the zoo were trying to grow flowers, but he had no idea how they'd come to be unbubbled and here on Earth. He could see the Off-Colors further down the beach. How had they got here? Last time he'd seen them was when he'd gone to rescue Lars; the spaceship they'd stolen to rescue him had been destroyed and so they'd never been able to go back for them. Even though he knew there was nothing he could do about it, he'd always felt bad for leaving them behind after all they'd done to help him and Lars. Same with the Rose Quartz gems, every time he thought about the zoo mission, he wanted to go back and shake his younger self for not trying to grab even one of them. True, he'd just got his father back, and they'd been separated from the other gems, and the Diamonds had been there... still, he couldn't help wondering if he could've somehow grabbed just one.

_This is a trap._

He blinked and shook his head, trying to dislodge the thought, but it refused to leave. Instead, more questions began flooding into his aching brain. When had they unbubbled Bismuth? When had they cured Centipeedle? If they really _had_ cured her, why was he still calling her Centipeedle? What was her real name? When the heck did he get on good enough terms with the Diamonds to invite them to his _wedding?_

And why was Pink Diamond in his house when he knew full well that his mother had shattered her five thousand years ago?

_All of this is too good to be true._

He shook his head again. He didn't want to believe it. "You're not in the Matrix, Steven," he muttered to himself as he began walking again. "Sometimes things _do_ just work out for the best. Now go inside and help Peridot with the seating plans for tomorrow, which will be the happiest day of your life."

He followed Connie into the beach house and greeted Bismuth, who was hammering at a wall with a shapeshifted hand. "Hey," she said, waving at him with her other hand. "If you're looking for your fiancee, she's in the back, going over the seating plans."

Steven nodded and took two steps towards the door at the other end of the aisle before he realized what was wrong. "Wait, what?"

"She's going over the seating plans," Bismuth said again. "Something about White Diamond? Anyway, she's been at it for three hours now." She chuckled fondly. "You might wanna go and give her a hand."

"Right..." Steven said slowly, and tried not to think about how he'd already known Peridot would need help with the seating plans even though they were supposed to have been sorted three days ago.

Just like he'd known what Connie was going to ask before she'd said it.

Just like he'd known which ring she'd choose.

_All of this has already happened before._

Another chill ran down his spine. He didn't want to think about it. And as he and Connie helped Peridot reorganize the seating, he squashed his rising panic and willfully ignored the fact that he already knew what arrangements would work before Peridot confirmed them. If he didn't acknowledge it, it wouldn't be true.

_How long have I been ignoring this?_

He pushed the notecards away and stood up to greet Lars and Sadie a full ten seconds before they actually walked into the house. He absently praised Lars for the beautiful cake moments before it was unveiled, responding to questions without really taking them in but somehow answering them perfectly. He instructed Peridot to talk to the newer gems about cakes that looked like rocks before she could suggest doing so herself. And then when she was gone, he sat down on a nearby chair, put his head between his knees and took several deep breaths until he felt a little less like throwing up.

"Isn't she adorable?" a familiar voice asked. Enormous pink shoes stepped into his line of sight and he slowly straightened up to see Pink Diamond looking longingly over at baby Janey-Lee. "It's so exciting to think one day she'll stop being small and she'll grow up and start walking and talking."

She opened her mouth to continue speaking, but Steven got there first. "Her life's going to be full of so many possibilities." He laughed hollowly. "Sounds like something my mom would say."

"...Yes," Pink Diamond said slowly. "It does, doesn't it?"

"Speaking of my mom," Steven continued, staring at the flawless diamond gem in her belly. "How can you be here when she shattered you?"

Pink Diamond was silent for a moment. "You... found me."

"Where?" he asked, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.

A small smile tugged at the corner of her lips. "Hidden in plain sight. Excuse me."

And before he could question her further, she walked away and began pulling faces at the baby. Connie turned and began walking towards him, and he knew they'd talk about the ring they were going to put in the bouquet, tied to a pink rose in the middle. Then he'd go and talk to Peedee about the catering and avert a small crisis with soup. The Rose Quartzes would lose control of their plant powers again and break the marquee and he'd use his own powers to fix everything. Peridot would give him a kiss and tell him how wonderful he was, then she would head off to reprogram her drones to carry decorations and one would go wrong and try to shoot the gem with the tongue she'd once poofed...

How many times had he lived through this day if he already knew all of this was going to happen?

Connie stopped in front of him, waiting for his line, but he couldn't bring himself to say it. "Excuse me," he said instead, and pushed past her, heading for the room he shared with Peridot.

Once he was inside, he closed the door and then lay face-down on his bed. "This is a bad dream," he mumbled into his pillow. Then the thought struck him and he began to laugh a little hysterically. "Oh jeez. That's _literally_ what this is!"

There was a quiet knock on the door and then he heard Peridot's voice. "Steven? May I come in?"

Steven stopped laughing and his mind went blank. For the first time that day, he had no idea what to expect and weirdly enough, that made him fell a little better. "Yeah, sure," he called back, and sat up.

She pushed the door open and crossed the room to sit down beside him. "Is everything all right?" she asked, looking up at him in concern.

He opened his mouth to lie to her, not wanting to worry her, but then he stopped himself. What would be the point? "No, not really," he admitted.

"Do you feel unwell? Connie said you looked sick." She pressed the back of her hand against his forehead before he could reply. "Your temperature is within the normal parameters."

"I do have a bit of a headache," he said, unconsciously leaning into her touch. "But that's not-"

"Why don't you lay down and rest?" she suggested, already pushing him back down onto the bed. "We have everything under control. Just have an early night."

Despite everything, he couldn't stop his eyes from closing. It would be so easy to just go to sleep and get this day over and done with. Then he could wake up in the morning and get happily married.

"Just think," Peridot said quietly, and he felt her snuggle up next to him. "Tomorrow I'll be Mrs Universe. I can't wait."

His eyes snapped open again and he sat up. "No."

Peridot stared at him in confusion. "What-"

"I said no." He jumped to his feet and spun around to face her. "You won't be Mrs Universe tomorrow."

"What?" she said again, and this time her heard fear in her voice. "Steven, what do you mean?"

He took a deep breath. "I mean, there isn't going to be a wedding."

Peridot's hands flew to her mouth and her eyes welled up with tears. "You-you're leaving me?"

"That's not what I-" he began.

"Bu-but I lo-love you! We're supposed to be g-getting m-married in the morning!"

The tears began to roll down her cheeks, and he instinctively took a step forward to comfort her before he forced himself to stop. "Peridot, I love you so much. This?" He held his arms open and smiled sadly at her. "It's everything I've ever wanted. My friends are happy, everybody's safe and well, the war is over, and you and me are about to have the happiest day of our lives together." He felt tears rising in his own eyes and blinked them away. "But none of this is real. It's corruption." And as he said it aloud, he knew it was true. Garnet had been right, his battleground wasn't fear, it was the promise of love keeping him here instead. "I have to go."

"Steven, wait!" She half-jumped, half-fell off the bed and lunged towards him, flinging her arms around his waist. "Please, you can't!" She gazed up at him with tear-shiny eyes. "I'm pregnant!"

"What!?" He could actually _feel_ the blood drain from his face, and the room span wildly, forcing him to lean back against the door before he fell over.

"-going to tell you on our honeymoon," he half-heard her say. "-a surprise-"

For a moment, it almost worked. Then he forced himself to push her away. "Peridot, what's an IC popper?"

"I-a what?" she stammered.

He looked into her eyes and saw that she honestly had no idea. Because _he_ had no idea. "I'm really sorry about this." He turned around and picked up his mother's sword, which was conveniently propped up against the wall next to him. "But you're not Peridot."

xxx

Amethyst arranged the headphones around Steven's head and then gave Pearl a thumbs up. "Ready."

"Good." Pearl nodded firmly and pressed a button on the tablet screen. "Oh. Ah. Whoops."

"What do you mean, whoops?" Peridot asked sharply.

"It's nothing, I just pressed- oopsie." Pearl flushed and swiped across the screen. "Oh dear, no... hmm..."

"Ugh, give it here!" Amethyst snapped, and leaned over Steven to try and snatch the tablet out of Pearl's hands. "I know how it works."

"I can manage!" Pearl snapped back, refusing to let go. "Just let me- stop that, Amethyst, I had it working!"

"Hey!" Peridot yelled as they began to tussle over her tablet. "Be careful! That's _mine!_ "

But before the argument could escalate any further, Steven's eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright with a loud gasp. "Peridot!"

For several seconds, there was chaos. Amethyst screamed again, and only Garnet's timely intervention saved Steven's nose from meeting the same fate as Peridot's. Pearl threw the tablet across the room without thinking and almost knocked out Greg. Lion roared with fright and instantly destroyed several hundred thousand dollars worth of medical equipment. And Peridot found herself crushed against her boyfriend's chest as he urgently kissed her gem over and over until he was satisfied it was intact. Then he pushed her away again. "What's an IC popper!?"

"A device for removing chips from circuit boards," she answered at once. "I suspect Amethyst has stolen it to floss her teeth with."

He laughed with delight and hugged her tightly again. "It's really you! I'm so happy you're awake!"

"You can thank your father for that." She pulled back slightly and waved a hand over at Greg, who was watching them with watery eyes, which were only partly due to the tablet that had bounced off of his head. "Apparently he has successfully managed to compose a song to counteract the effects of corruption." She smiled proudly. "It's what we used to wake you up as well."

"Really?" He stared at his father with admiration. "Dad, that's incredible!"

Greg grinned bashfully. "It was nothing- well, it wasn't nothing," he quickly corrected himself. "It was definitely something- aw hell. Any room in that hug for your old man?"

Peridot and Steven exchanged glances, and then nodded in unison. "Come on," Steven beckoned.

Greg stepped forward, embraced the couple and immediately burst into tears. Moments later, Garnet and Amethyst joined in, complete with their own noisy sobbing.

And while the tearful reunion was taking place, Pearl picked up the tablet and after a furtive look around, closed the music app before anybody could see that the music was paused. Thanks to the struggle for control of the tablet, she hadn't managed to get the song playing properly.

Of course, she told herself as she joined the group hug, it was possible that Steven's human half had protected him after all, just as Greg had said. But she couldn't quite shake the suspicion that it was the gem side of him that had prevented him from fully succumbing to corruption.

Because of course, the only gem who had ever managed to fight back against the Diamond's weapon had been Rose. And after all this time, she didn't want the others to start wondering exactly how she'd managed to do that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all for this story! Gonna take a little break now and catch up on some reading before I start writing the next part. Thanks for reading!


End file.
